You successfully rebuild your first wheel! Talk about gratifying

Went through the hub last week. Cleaned, greased & new bearings. Left a hint of play in the adjustment that gets taken up when the QR is closed. Spinning them by hand, I can read a very slight bit of “roughness.” But spinning them mounted to the frame, they still go long & come to a slow rocking stop, valve hole always on top. I think that’s smooth enough for my needs.

As far as the spokes & rim goes, the wheel was fairly straight & round to begin with, but tensions were all over the place & extremely high in some areas. I decided to completely loosen the wheel. Once everything was totally slack, I removed nipples one at a time & gave each one & the threads of their respective spokes a good wetting with some Tenacious Oil.

The wheel was rebuilt right to left, bringing the drive side up to within ~60% of its target tension while leaving the non-drive side loose. Then, using the loaded drive side spokes, I checked for radial trueness, and made the few necessary small adjustments.

Next step was to bring the non-drive under tension which brought the drive side leftwards towards center & within the dish zone. This step also gave the benefit of further loading the drive side spokes with additional tension.

Finishing steps included dialing the rim in for dead on dish smack dab in the middle of the lock nuts. And finally, adjustments for radial trueness.

The results? A round wheel within 0.55 mm of true & lateral straightness within 0.25 mm

Drive side is ~110 kgf tension while the non-drive is ~65 kgf. All spokes are dialed in to within + - 10% values for their respective side.

And the kicker? Besides the fact that I almost paid the LBS to do this job? I did it by using a chair with a pair of straps as a make shift bike stand. The frame as a trueing stand along with feeler gauges & zip ties as indicators. And three soup cans as a dishing tool! Oh yea... an iPhone app for a tension meter.