lotek 

sort of.

I'm building up a set of track wheels, Campy record (old record) hubs
with Wolber Aspin rims 14ga spokes laced 3x 36hole.
Pretty simple right? no.
It went something like this: get the wheels true, dish out by 1/4 to 1/2 inch.
Redish wheel and trueing goes out window. Detension spokes, retrue wheel
dish out by 1/4 inch, redish wheel now retrue and start all over again.

After the 3rd of 4th go round of this I said screw it and brought them to
LBS.

Seeing as this is a track wheelset I was a bit anal about wanting everything
perfect.
This isn't the first pair of wheels I've built but I've never had this kind
of experience before, any thoughts on what was going on with them?
I double checked spocalc and verified with DTspoke calculator and the shops online
spoke calculator that I had correct lenght spokes etc.

Marty

Gonzo Bob

Did you keep track of where the problem area was each time? If it was always the same spot on the rim, there could be a flat spot in the rim that isn't allowing you to get enough tension in the drive side spoke there (there may be no more threads on the spoke).

It could also be a spoke or two that is slightly too long. I once built a wheel that a spoke calculator said required 301mm and 302mm. But 301mm was not made for the spoke I wanted so I got 300mm and 302mm. But some of the 300mm spokes were more like 301mm and some of the 302mm were 303mm. On first few attempts I could not get the wheel dished and trued at the same time so I swapped spokes around until I got it all to work.

WoodyUpstate

1. You need to detension after truing, before dishing.
2. When correcting for dish, you should only change spoke tension on one side of the wheel, and by the same amount, e.g. 1/4 turn per spoke nipple. True should change very little after dishing.
3. Detension and check for true.

Also, you didn't mention if you checked for radial true (roundness). I like my wheels true, round and detensioned before correcting dish.

To detension, remove skewer, grab wheel at 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock between a pair of spokes. While on your knees, place hub on carpeted floor, or hard floor with a shop rag on it and press down. Rotate to next set up spokes until you've come 360 degrees. You will hear pinging spokes as the spokes are relieved. Flip wheel and repeat. A little practice will help you determine how much effort this takes.

After detensioning, retrue.

DannoXYZ 

Do you mean stress-relief when you say detension?

lotek 

wheel was either round, true or properly dished but never all 3 at once.
I detension(stress relieve) after each step in building, and my philosphy on
this is I can stress relieve without gloves I'm doing it wrong.
I have to admit I don't have a spoke ruler (note to self, go buy one), as I trust the LBS
that when I ask for 301mm spokes (for example) I actually get that size.
I'll let you know what the result of the shops true and dish efforts were and
what it took to get it right.
Funny, one would think that track wheel would be easier to build/true/dish .

marty

waterrockets 

There shouldn't be any pinging. When adjusting spokes, you should twist until the threads break and the nipple actually spins on the spoke, twist the amount needed, then back off the twist the same amount that it took to get started. If you hold the spoke between thumb and index finger on the non-wrench hand, you can feel exactly how far you need to back off when the adjustment is done.

Stress-relieving is done by squeezing parallel sets of spokes toward each other all the way around the rim. Each hand squeezing adjacent pairs on opposite sides. Sqeeze really hard. You can also do what sheldon does, which is to use a tool to force-twist the spokes around each other. I think I get better results squeezing. You should do this after you get the wheel properly tensioned, dished, rounded, and trued. You should also do it from that point forward after every truing session.

-Mike

Wil Davis

I always thought that the "force-twisting" the spokes was just to "pre-align" the spokes to get them running at the correct angle from the nipples, and to lay correctly on the flange of the hub. The "squeezing of the spokes" is to help the stress-relieving, but I've found the most effective way is to press the wheel on the floor or workbench (see "The Art of Wheelbuilding - Gerd Schraner" p.85).

- Wil

Re-Cycle

wait, when you say dish out... what do you mean?

waterrockets 

Yeah, I think any massive but gradual increase in spoke tension does the stress relieving. I've heard of slight Italian mechanics walking around on the spokes barefoot, near the nipples. Whatever floats your boat, but it must be done.

Retro Grouch 

Are you sure that all of your spokes are the same length?

I used to work for a shop that had multiple locations. After struggling with wheelbuilding results similar to yours for about three hours I discovered that, during the inventory process, some genius had grouped spokes that weren't quite the same length together. If I ever find out who did it I'm taking the dull cable cutters to fix him so that he can't reproduce.

DannoXYZ 

Actually squeezing two parallel spokes puts more load on them and relieves stress better than leaning on the entire wheel with the hub on the ground. That's because the force is concentrated on two spokes instead of spreading them out amongst all the spokes. It's similar to actually riding the wheel itself as you unload 3-4 spokes at the bottom and you can hear them >tink< >tink< >tink< one at a time as the wheel takes its first couple rolls under load.

I suspect you made way, way too coarse of adjustments. Typically I do it in stages with finer and finer adjustments:

1. lace wheel up, tighten all spokes to within 95% of final tension
2. fix lateral trueness, tighten/loosen spoke-pairs, tighten 1 side 1-complete turn, loosen adjacent spoke 1-complete turn
3. fix radial trueness (round), tighten/loosen spoke-pairs, tighten pair of spokes at high-spot 1-complete turn, loosen pair of spokes at low-spot 1-complete turn.
4. stress-relieve wheel

5. fix lateral trueness, tighten/loosen spoke-pairs, tighten 1 side 1/2 turn, loosen adjacent spoke 1/2 turn
6. fix radial trueness (round), tighten/loosen spoke-pairs, tighten pair of spokes at high-spot 1/2 turn, turn, loose pair of spokes at low-spot 1/2 turn.
7. stress-relieve wheel

8. fix lateral trueness, tighten/loosen spoke-pairs, tighten 1 side 1/4 turn, loosen adjacent spoke 1/4 turn
9. fix radial trueness (round), tighten/loosen spoke-pairs, tighten pair of spokes at high-spot 1/4 turn, turn, loose pair of spokes at low-spot 1/4 turn.
10. stress-relieve wheel

11. fix lateral trueness, tighten/loosen spoke-pairs, tighten 1 side 1/8th turn, loosen adjacent spoke 1/8th turn
12. fix radial trueness (round), tighten/loosen spoke-pairs, tighten pair of spokes at high-spot 1/8th turn, turn, loose pair of spokes at low-spot 1/8th turn.'
13. stress-relieve wheel

14. If tension is still low, tighten all spokes evenly 1/16-1/8th turn.

My guess is your adjustments were too extreme and you ended up pushing the wheel into the opposite side. Also dishing is done automatically at the same time you fix lateral trueness if your've got your truing-stand adjusted properly.

Rev.Chuck

I do all three adjustments at the same time. You need to work in small steps, working on all of the issues at once. My wheels are round, true, and dished before the tension reaches anywhere near the max.
The stress relief method I use is to hold the wheel like a steering wheel, pull it towards me with my hands at 11 and 3, pulling against my elbows(about 5 and 8) Then rotate all the way around, hitting each group of four.

lotek 

I'm not sure on the spoke lengths, as I said I don't have spoke ruler, but I will be
getting one when I go to pick up the wheel.
DannoXYZ when I was trying to get the dish correct I was usually adjusting 1/4 turn
on the spoke nipples, maybe that was too coarse an adjustment I need to revisit that on
a different rim/wheel.
What puzzles me is that I've not had this kind of frustration/problems building a wheelset before.
Granted I'm not a pro at it (and I probably won't be a "good" wheelbuilder until I've laced/trued/etc
at least 20 more sets of wheels) but this wasn't the first (or even 5th or 10th) set of wheels I've built.

anyhow, thanks for the advise, it is much appreciated.

Marty

chromedome

After 7 sets of wheels, I finally gave up building my own wheels. Just wasn't worth the bother.

What helped equalizing tension was what Dannoxyz said about squeezing spokes, even with just doing minor truing, etc.

I always found I needed total concentration on the wheel, without distraction from TV, music, wife, kids.

I also found that drinking beer while building a wheel meant I would be starting over with it the next day.

orange leader

Find out if all your spokes are the same length by just using a regular ruler. If they're different lengths they'll be different lengths no matter what measuring device you use.

Heck, a longish (kind of long) piece of paper and a pencil will work to see if they're the same or not, it won't give you a numeric length but it will tell you if they're the same. Mark out one spoke, and compare the rest to the that spokes mark.

Also, I've always gotten dish into a wheel by purchasing two different spoke lengths on purpose, one for the drive side, and one for the non-drive side.

Make sure you haven't mixed up the spokes you were given, although track wheels generally have little to no dish. I ride a fixie myself, and although it's been about 3 years since i built the set I'm currently riding, I don't remember there being any dish, or difference in the spoke lengths.

Good luck

orange leader

please ignore this response, I accidentally hit the post button twice, and I had to resort to editing this one down to this lame exuse for why this excuse is here in the first place.

are you confused? so am i.

lotek 

recommended lengths for spokes were
front left- 299.8 right 298.1
rear left- 299.8 right 298.1

I can't go back and measure them as they are laced into the wheels
and at the LBS now.
geez, after 5 or 6 wheels I was getting comfortable building my own, and
I'm going to continue rolling. . .er I mean building my own.

xostnot

I don't think anyone mentioned that another reason for crossing spokes is to lower the chances of pulling off a section of hub flange.

Anything that increases tension on a dished wheel, "looses" dishing. Just tightening one spoke will cost a bit of dishing. So to maintain dishing while doing the final touches, you should achieve trueness and roundness by loosening some spokes as much as you tighten others. Spokes on the dished side need more adjustment to make something happen than on the other side. Dished wheels need the nipples to be screwed up 3-4 more turns than the other side, which is far enough to justify using a different length spoke. If you do this early in the assembly, the dishing is basically set up.

At some point early in the assembly, I'd make sure all the nipples were screwed on within one thread of being the same as each other. Further work on the wheel was always done with consideration of maintaining this equality. A consequence of a tensioned spoke wheel is that the spokes are trying to pull the rim in toward the hub, and the easiest way for that to happen is for the rim to go into the pretzel shape. With even spoke tension, there is no weak point where this pretzeling can initiate. And the wheel will stay straigher longer.

Where possible, "taper" in and out areas of correction so that you don't introduce smaller outages at the ends of what you've corrected, plus maintaining fairly even spoke tension.

My method of seating the spokes in the hub and nipples, and to straighten them on the crosses, was two-part. I'd do this once the overall tension had reached finished tension. The first part was to put the wheel on the floor, rim touching the floor next to me, and hands at 10:00 and 2:00. I'd press down until I could feel the rim was about to start buckling, then release. I'd rotate the wheel some, repeat, and do this several times on both sides.

The second part was to leave the wheel on the floor, stand up, and stand on every set of two adjacent spokes. All the way around, both sides. Weight on the spokes would depend on the delicacy of the wheel. You don't want to pretzel it doing this. After these two procedures, the wheel would need to be brought back up to final tension. Repeating these operations produced no additional looseness, and so was unnecessary.

In conjunction with relieving the tension on the spokes as I worked with them, my wheels would not need retruing after initial use. One fellow rode around the perimeter of the US on a new set of wheels I built, with a touring load, and never needed to touch his wheels. Wheels built with the spokes as evenly tensioned as possible within the limits of the imperfections of the materials, and prestressed properly, can withstand pretty bad accidents, and in normal use may never need to be tensioned or trued. That they never break spokes goes without saying.

Deanster04

Find out what the LBS builder says. If you are paying them they might be able to give you some feedback about any problems you were having. A good friendly LBS usually will give you help.