Vins and Hybrid, thanks or the responses. Vins I hadn't thought about building or re-tensioning a factory built wheel, although it's not a bad idea. I would like to get the experience of building it from scratch though, and I found a website (Universal Cycles) that will allow me to keep the cost down to the price of the wheels that you mentioned from BWW. I should have mentioned what I plan to do with these, it's for road riding and possibly some training, no I don't plan to race these. However I'm hoping to become competent enough that I could one day make a set of race wheels for myself, maybe I'm being naive in thinking this.

I ordered the Jobst Brandt book and a wheelbuilding DVD that I plan to use for more research before starting this but there is still one thing I'm curious about. How do you determine the proper tension for the wheels? I picked up a tension meter to measure it, but how will I know where it should be? I read that there's a well-known wheel builder who knows the tension for each type of wheel he builds in his shop and he will first bring the wheels to tension before he starts truing the wheel. Seems like this might be the quickest route to take if you know what number to aim for. Also, is it possible to use a similar set of wheels to base this off of? I would imagine spoke length and type (straight gauge, double butted) would have an effect on this.