Old 01-26-17, 04:27 PM
  #14  
Andy_K 
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One other thing I'd say about teaching yourself, I think it's helpful to build a wheel or two from scratch even if what you're trying to learn is how to true a wheel. After re-reading your comment it sounds like you were just trying to true a wheel when you "thoroughly messed up". That can happen. You need to understand the whole system -- how things work together. When you build a wheel from scratch you see all that. When you just take a spoke wrench to an existing wheels there are a lot of things you can do that make it look right that actually made the wheel worse.

If you're feeling brave you could completely detension the front wheel in your current set and try to bring it back to a finished state. You'd essentially be doing everything but lacing it. The non-butted spokes are ideal for this kind of learning. There's not a lot you can do to permanently ruin the wheel. As long as you don't give it so much tension that the rim collapses or spokes break through the rim it's fixable. This is where a tension meter would help.

BTW, the wheels I bought from VeloMine arrived at pretty close to the maximum recommended spoke tension for the wheel. You should be aware of that if you try to true it yourself without backing anything out. If you try to fix it by adding more tension everywhere it wobbles you could get yourself in trouble.
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