I know the title sounds a little off, but I couldn't think of a better way to explain this in a few words.

I'm working on a junky old 26" aluminum wheel that was neglected and allowed to become quite out of true. Replacements are no longer made for the wheel, so I made attempts at repairing it. I am doing these repairs as a learning process. Somewhere in life I learned the lesson to "learn on junk" and I took that to heart.

I replaced all the nipples and put washers on many of them as needed and trued up the wheel and brought it up to tension as best as I was able. After calling that a success and riding for a few weeks, I noticed that the wheel was again out of lateral true and I was able to true it up much more easily the second time.

So think of a badly out of tune piano. Each subsequent tuning will be easier than the one before and provide better results as the tension of the strings slowly bend the frame back to where it is designed to be. Do bad bike wheels work the same way? Does each subsequent truing get better as they gradually nurse the rim back toward proper shape?