Originally Posted by hiromian
Why is a hand built is better, does the machine get the tension wrong or something?
One of the secrets of building a good, strong wheel is to strain-relieve often, and to get the tension correct. The two things are related, and machines aren't all that good at doing either. I've had machine-built wheels that were beautifully true, but the tension was only about half of what it should have been. They would have started going out of true and breaking spokes in fairly short order if I hadn't retensioned and strain-relieved them.
- Wil