So, I got myself one of those inexpensive spoke tension meters. I have no illusions of it giving accurate tension figures, but just got it to give relative readings to have closer to even tensions all around the wheel. I’ve only built a few wheels but trued many more after I got the Park stand. It is kind of rewarding to do and is a good winter chore. I’ve read many posts on these, and I have the Jobst Brandt book.

My question is a bit vague in wanting some general tension guidelines for different situations. I have read higher tension for eyeletted rims in general. How about single wall vs box section? 3 cross vs 4? Other observations? My stuff is from maybe 1964-1990 and mostly 36 hole with a couple 32. Not looking for any hard rules, but just general observations from more experienced builders.

I have quite a few bikes so not thousands of miles ridden each. In general, I think I err to the side of lower tension in my past attempts with just going by sound of a plucked spoke, and I don’t break any spokes on my rides. Truing is fairly easy, but it doesn’t seem correct to more or less guess whether to tighten on one side or loosen on the other. With the new meter, I am really looking for spokes that are either somewhat tighter or looser. Some general theories would be of help when deciding overall tightness as relating to what the rim is capable of.

There was a time when tension gauges didn't exist, and the subject of tension wasn't really addressed in any sort of quantitative way. Jobst Brandt's book, The Bicycle Wheel, was the first to try to look at the engineering in a wheel and tried to de-mystify the topic. Even Jobst didn't provide a clear answer. From page 105 of the book:

The wheels I built back in the day were looser than what I build now. A loose wheel is more likely to lead to fatigue failure of the spokes.
Rims have improved since then, and even the spokes are better (I'm thinking of 1970's Robergel steel spokes).

My only advice would be to find similar wheels built by someone you trust, and try to duplicate the spoke tension in those wheels.

Steve in Peoria (and I don't have a spoke tension gauge)

Box-section rims can take more tension than non-box sections.
Eyelets will take more tension than non-eyelets (unless you use spoke washers).

One thing you could do is find a wheel with the same gauge of spokes you believe to have the correct tension (front and rear are different, so one of each) and take 5-10 tension measurements on that and use that as your guide for the wheels you build. Once it is built, you can assess if the spokes need to be SLIGHTLY more loose or more tight.

Yep, I read that in my Jobst book. I am a bit reluctant to tighten to deformation though. I did that once however and had no bad results. I know manufacturers might give readings in general. I was just trying to decipher any rhyme or reason to it. For example my miyata has Ukia single walled rims with no eyelets, while others like some Wolber I have are box rims with eyelets. Many other varieties too. Since everything is old, I don’t go real tight, and as you suggest, I compare to ones that a bike shop did for a cautious upper limit. Maybe if I put thousands of miles on each bike, I would break some spokes, but I don’t currently with my bikes.

I tend to think that there is some overthinking going on. I have always built wheels by feel. Once they are straight, true and round they tend to stay that way.

Your thinking is similar to mines. Wheels overall probably similar also, 32/36H, 3 cross, some with eyelets, both road & MTB. Spokes are of various gauges, 2.0, 1.8, 1.6, some butted.

I usually try to tension to about 90-100 on rear drive side, NDS comes in at 50s +/-, front about 90 (rim brake), measured with a Park tension meter (actual accuracy unknown).

With the high spoke count and 3 cross, this is firm enough. Rears are common tension balance for 8-10 speed hubs (NDS about 50-60% of DS). Not very hard on my wheels and have very little problems with my wheels after build and one touch-up (after 50 miles +/-).

This is probably quite true and your method has been my practice, and thousands of others too I bet. Reading other posts here in the winter months led me to think “why not”? Another tool is always fun and I thought it could be informative. Too cold here to do much riding, so basement wrenching is relaxing.

I think this is a good way of building a wheel assuming the rim is flat and round to start with, this way uniform spoke tension (+-) is doable. But if you are truing a bent wheel, uniform tension is going to be difficult if not impossible.

I never liked the idea of tightening to deformation. That might be okay for folks with a lot of experience, but are they the ones reading his book?

One purpose of adequate spoke tension is to keep the nipples from coming loose. If your wheels aren't coming out of true, then the tension is good enough for that purpose.

A second purpose is to keep the spokes from fatiguing too much from changes in tension as the wheel rotates (as I understand it). If you aren't breaking spokes, then it's not a problem. Of course, you'll only know for sure after 20,000 miles or so, so it's not easy to tell. That's where the folks who build a ton of wheels have an advantage!

On the other side of the tension question is stuff like pulling nipples through rims, or cracking at the eyelets (especially on anodized rims). Some Trek Matrix rims were notorious for this. This is especially a concern when building with relatively new hubs that require more dish than a 6 speed Campy Record hub.

It's good that you've checked wheels at the local shop, especially if the wheels are similar to yours. If the folks replying to this thread can offer their wheel configurations and the tension that they've used, that might be a useful database.

Steve in Peoria

So anodized is a caution point at upper limit. I only have a couple of those, but that is the sort of caution that I am looking to note and remember.

Yes, the JB book is very interesting and informative reading.

wow, new information. I wasn't aware that this tool existed.

I always spun the wheel and held a small metal tool against the spokes to hear the "ting ting ting ting ting….."

If one was loose, more of a "tong"

isolate and tighten.

SD 5782 great post. was thinking about such a post when I came across this thread. It is hard to find a tension figure for vintage rims. My taste is pre-1980 French steel bikes with tubular tyres. So we are talking 28”, 20mm external and second hand mostly.

I have noticed when using double butted 2.0/1.8/2.0 stainless spokes bringing the tension on a park tool up to 20 (lol, remember spinal tap?) it lost its shape so easy when trying the final few tweaks to match spoke tension.

I have found fr 17/17 & 17/18 ds and 11 nds to have a feel of about right. I have tested spoke tension on factory build vintage wheels and recently bought a pair of wheels which had been custom built and not used for the last 25 years (granted they may have lost tension) and their tension was this or just under. All 36 spokes btw.

If you have some vintage wheels and a park tool tension gauge how about popping it down here? Yes we have to allow calibration differences, but it will be an interesting aggregate.

don't follow the spoke tension guidelines for vintage rims and wheels. Find a wheel that is well built, and listen to / feel the tension

65 - 80 kgf with a high level of uniformity is what you should shoot for.

what Jobst doesn't tell you is that once you over tension the wheel, it is compromised and will not be reliable - you would not want to ride it.

think about the elastic range of the spokes, and not ultimate tension

/markp

I read somewhere that Mavic specced 90kgf max for their tubular rims BITD.

Here's what they currently say:From https://technicalmanual.mavic.com/te...ucts/2_119.pdf

I've build Mavic Monthlery Route and MA2 with 90kgf on front and DS, 7 and 8 speed in 126mm.
Works fine and no issues, but I don't kerb hop and I'm 87kg.

Too much tension (times spoke count) can potato-chip a singlewall rim on the truing stand, and even 36h dbl-walled rims could suffer the same.

I once pulled an eyelet out of a Module-E rim at about 100kg, but it happened months later while just sitting in storage.

The other day I added a mere 2mm spacer to the right side of my new SR Maxima's Superbe Pro rear axle to accomodate a wider-spaced Uniglide freewheel having better ratios replacing a U-6 freewheel.

After dishing and equi-tensioning, I ended up with a uniform 80kg on the driveside, and that is plenty for the Araya narrow clincher rim. Be assured that this is better tension than OEM bike wheels almost ever come with or came with.
I bought generic carbon wheels recently having 24 spokes on the rear wheel. Drive-side tension was only 70kg, and not particularly uniform at that!

High-grade, low-spoke-count carbon wheels often have their very thin spokes tensioned up around 140kg, off-road wheels like this take a real beating for years without problems. Usually they are brought to me when the nipples start failing from corrosive sealant having entered the rim cavity, and it's a lot of work removing all of the crumbly nipples while saving the expensive spokes for my re-assembling.

So we have an aggregate of 65-90kgf with one at 100kgf. I have a pair of old nos first edition Ambrosio Montreal which don’t have a great name on velo base for tension and retaining eyelets. I pulled these up to near 100kgf to see how they reacted (I like to push limits to see where they are lol). They were very, very sensitive to get to 0.2mm runout. I later dropped them by 15 kgf and they were much happier. That was a fun night for me……I really need to get out more……

I shoot for about 77-80 kgf on a vintage rim and it was good to see other people are around the same figure on a vintage rim build.

This.

A great asset to add to your memory is the feel in your hands of properly tensioned spokes.

Right. One of the tricks shared by master wheelbuilder Ric Hjertberg in his classes is that you can "ping" the spokes like a guitar string to test for both even-ness and absolute tension.

there is no way to describe the right tension in terms of sound, but comparing what you know to be a well built wheel, with the sound of the one you're working on, is a big help.

/markp

Bill Mould is another great resource for wheelbuilding information. He's built wheels for a lot of the prop riders in the US.

I was fortunate to find a set of NOS Martano rims for my '71 Masi project. My wheelbuilding experience is not extensive. I've built wheels over the years, but have also had wheels distort from over tensioning the spokes.

For the Martano's, I didn't want to take a chance, and was fortunate to find Bill Mould locally. We met, he gave me some pointers, and I have been able to build up a decent set of wheels.

Bill has several CD's available on wheelbuilding, that I have found to be very beneficial.

A couple of points about "pinging" or plucking same-side spokes for comparative tensions:

----You have to keep a finger on any crossing spoke, lest the two spokes both produce ringing.

----Different gauge spokes sound wildly different, why we never substitute a different-gauge spoke. Even spoke length affects the tone.

----Small differences in tension produce seemingly big changes in ring tone.

I always check the tone of adjacent same-side spokes for their ring pitch (tension) before tightening or loosening a spoke.
The idea here is to be improving the spoke tension uniformity while truing a wheel, not making it more uneven.

The spokes on the opposite side that are adjacent to a spoke you are about to adjust should also be checked for uneven tensions, since it might be better to adjust those spokes to achieve true-ness.

I git ya...

I really like my Cheap ChiCom Tension meter, but it has come with some caveats. The one I got cannot really be calibrated. It came with a printed Table of Equivalents but I have not really tested it for comparison to other meters. My solution was to go through my small stable of bikes and take readings of the wheels and spoke tension on them. I accumulated an average tension for my meter and that is what I go for... generally.

I did help a young guy down the street get his meter checked. He had a new TREK that went severely out of round after an Owie. We drove into town and used his Cheap meter to measure the tension on brand new TREKs at the shop of his bicycle wheels. Of course the readings were much different then TREK specs but he got a ball park figure for the tension he needed on his bike with his particular meter.

I don't build wheels from scratch but my meter has been an important part of resurrecting more then a few trashed wheel sets...

Because I can't afford an accident of any sort my "Pre-Flight Check List" is long. My rides are on older bikes with questionable components.

When ever I pump up my tires I go through the motions of lifting the bikes up, spinning the wheel, and dragging a wooden stick across the spokes to check for differences in tone. I also do a little squeeze on them looking for big differences.

I fondly remember the days I could just jump on a bike and take off without a care... Ha

Here's my take on this. If you're a professional wheel builder, you need to build wheels to a higher standard of reliability. If you're building wheels for yourself, you have the advantage that your wheelbuilder rides along with you every time you're on the bike. If I build a wheel for myself and after 20,000 miles it starts breaking spokes, I replace all the spokes and start over. I get more wheel building experience that way. Frankly, if I paid my LBS to build a wheel for me and it started breaking spokes after 20,000 miles, I wouldn't be too upset. If I build a wheel for myself and it goes out of true after a few rides, I true it and ride on. That's where I'd be unhappy with a wheel I paid to have built.

My quote was in regards to fatigue, so while it's handy to be your own wheel builder, you'll have to be carrying spare spokes for that to be useful.

Fortunately, I have the feeling that you'll experience wheels going out of true due to low spoke tension before fatigue becomes an issue. As long as you recognize that low tension is the reason for the recurring untrueness, you should be able to correct the situation. Back in the 70's when I learned to build wheels, I don't recall that there was an explicit mention of the relationship between tension and fatigue. Of course, there were no tension gauges either... in the Cyclo-Pedia catalog article about wheel building and truing that was part of my education, it just said "Tighten the nipples only 1/8 turn. Keep repeating until you feel the tension is correct". I do still stop once I get to 1/8 turn increments, but the whole idea of knowing what tension is correct is pretty unquantified. Even Jobst said to tighten until the rim started to collapse, which never quite made sense to me.

I think I had to wait until I could check the tension in friends' wheels (that I had faith in) before I got a good feel for what the proper tension should be. I still check my new wheels against my old wheels when deciding when the tension is adequate. I haven't invested in a tension gauge. Instead, I just grab pairs of spokes and see how far they flex when I squeeze... very much like the hand-stressing in the photo below.




Steve in Peoria