Originally Posted by
JohnDThompson
My point is that for somebody who has never built a wheel before, a tension meter is superfluous. Learn the basics of wheel building first, then when you start having customers pay you to build wheels, invest in the fancy equipment.
So how would a beginner know if the tension is correct???
I could see arguing that an *experienced* builder would not need it, but arguing the beginner somehow knows the correct tension w/o any way to measure it, just seems backward to me.
I started building my own wheels because the (supposedly reputable) online builder built a wheel that started cracking around the spokes in a few weeks, then they refused to warranty it. When I bought my tension meter, I put it on their wheels and found the tension was literally off the Park tension chart. So obviously even experienced builders need to use tension meters.