You are reading a single comment by @JWestland and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@JWestland
I used the very unscientific method of going by feel for average spoke tension:
If a spoke becomes very hard to turn, stop. Check tension of the surrounding spokes and if spoke isn't in under strange angle.
Once spokes become relatively tight you'll often hear them "ping" and creak so you'll sorta know when tension is really going up. (not all do though, but you'll notice it in the last truing/rounding phases)
Feeling the spokes, if there are some feeling VERY loose relatively after truing/rounding to say 1mm there's an issue. Never happened to me, but could be a flaky rim or other issue. Or perhaps you accidentally mixed a spoke length. (yeah that's something I see myself doing ;)
Once done squeeze the spokes to untension (many ways to do this, Sheldon uses an old bicycle crank) and if there's anything wrong you will feel it too.
A very unscientific method resulting in a fine 36H rear track and now a front 32H for road use on a cheap n cheerful heavish rim (Open sport)
I'd buy myself a spoke tensionometer for low spoke count wheels or wheels for very fast riding/downhilling as there's no room for error (broken face risk...)
Park Tool one is around £50 I believe so that's not too bad. Some are very £££
No doubt the cycleclinic can make a recommendation :)