It's recommended on the vintage trek site, www.vintage-trek.com , that you reinforce the chainstay and seatstay bridges before cold setting, to try and insure that the joints at the bridges don't pop. I wrapped mine with filament tape, wrapping around each bridge several times as tightly as I could. Whether this actually does any good or not, I don't know, but it gave me some peace of mind as I spread my frame. I used the threaded rod technique (the weakness with this method is that it doesn't account for frame alignment like Sheldon's method does) with excellent results. I remember I had to spread the dropouts to around 160 or 170mm to get them to "set" at 130mm, from 126mm. As Dirtdrop says, work carefully and measure the progress you've achieved as you go along so that you don't overdo it. You'll get more confidence when you measure and see that the dropouts have permanently spread some-