I went to UBI to get certified since I am already certifiable, and not because I expected to learn much, I ended up helping to teach the course and tutored my classmates as they lost one of the instructors and had realized that I had more experience than anyone else.

Besides the shop management aspects of the advanced class we had practicums and one of those was to build a wheel.

I did that in my usual 45 minutes and the junior instructor came by to check my work and broke out the tension meter and said he had never seen anyone build such a perfectly tensioned and true wheel.

He almost keeled over when I told him I never used the Park tension meter... he had never been taught any other way.

This is not to say that I did not check the tension... I just did not need a tension meter to tell me if it was right.

I use a tension meter when I need to... when I teach wheel building classes I stress that building a sound wheel is more dependent on skill and experience and that if you are not experienced then the tension meter is your friend.

You should see my trueing stand... at it's simplest it was an inverted fork with zip ties for indicators and now it uses dial indicators and is more effective dishing wheels than a dishing tool since I build them like a machinist would.