Originally Posted by
adipe
when it comes to wheel building... you can stick a heavy rim for a heavy rider as your sloppy work is just sloppy and you don't care too much about weight - in which case you should work much more on the wheel for a light rim if the wheel is to withstand large dynamic loads.
the main point is this: someone who is able to achieve less than +/-6% tension variance while also having wheels with imperceptible runout is really after quality. resilience is one thing, low runout is another. and i want first and foremost resilience and wheels that have more up to +/-20% spoke tension variance will always be horrible to me.
you may care less about these facts. not saying that wheels cannot be resilient if they don't meet the criteria of high enough average tension and low tension variance. i'm just saying you would care less about having a heavy rim for heavier dynamic loads - as in margin of safety when it comes to taco and flat spots. flat spots can also happen because of excessive spoke tension (depending on spoke thickness and number of spokes) but that's another story.
it is nice to have wheels able to take more than 350kgf dynamic loads, right? that's because of higher than usual tension which can only make sense with very low spoke tension variance. wheels that have almost no runout too.
then again, i have a front wheel on an e-bike that has almost zero tension variance with runout that is ~0.5mm. you could hardly tell which spoke on the same flange has the lower tension when plucking them. i did aim to do just that for this particular front disc brake wheel on this heavy e-bike (22kg+) where resilience was of utmost importance and the largest weight is on the rear (motor rear hub and battery on top of it). it would be impossible to tell the wheel has runout when riding it, by the way. and spoke average tension on the disc side is about 140kgf on that front wheel. i built the wheel for myself and it just happens that i did not measure radial runout on every portion of the rim to balance out with spoke tension variance but spared my time to work on the more difficult rear wheel that was more messed up when i bought the bike. i also felt i could use this front wheel as an example to illustrate a point whenever i get to talk about these things and i would have the bike with me to show folks. so you may call this front wheel example a kind of sloppy work i did for myself (when it comes to runout). yet it is not really sloppy on a practical level.
...not to start up a big brouhaha about any of this, but I am curious as to where you came up with your ideas on bicycle wheel construction. To say that they are "idiosyncratic" in nature is to understate the obvious. For example (and this is only one example), the majority off the rims I lace up here do not come to me from the maker perfectly round. There is almost always (unless you can afford the really expensive rims) some runout from a perfect circle at the joint, which in olden times was mostly pinned, but is often welded and machined nowadays.
To accomplish a more or less circular wheel, centered on the axle, (what you are calling microscopic runout,) I am compelled to sloppily increase the tensions on the spokes in this area as I build my wheels. sometimes, as the wheel progresses, these tensions will even out a little with the rest. But that is not always the case. Sometimes, the best compromise I can accomplish in search of a round wheel is a couiple of sets at the rim joint that are tensioned higher than their fellows. It's physics, and manufacturing tolerances.
I think maybe you are confusing OCD with expertise. And I'm no expert, but I've seen (and experienced) enough OCD in my life to have a good idea how it works. Anyway, if you feel like replying, I'll read it. But a lot of the exchanges on teh Biekforooms that start out like this start to resemble piling on. And I have no wish to participate in that sort of activity.
I will say that your references to e-bike do not surprise me. E-bikers are an idiosyncratic group here, often in search of some minimal respect in the face of constant abuse.
