Wheelbuilding / Wheel Building / Wheel build help

If you haven't tried this technique which is to ascertain the amount of tension a rim can handle, I would do it very carefully. What you're doing is going over what the rim can take and then backing off. But how far is safe so that you can see that you have indeed gone over? If you go too far you can ruin a good rim. It's happened to me a few times so I'm generally careful when the tension is reaching that point.

That's true, I actually don't tend to go that far. I've reached that point once or twice with Open Sports (I think they're relatively weak in that respect) but I have a Park tension meter so now I build up to a specific tension, based on what I know from experience the rim can take. About 110 kgf for Open Sports, up to 130 kgf for stiffer stuff like CXP33s.

Brandt's guide is very much of a time when spokes were a lot worse, rims were very shallow, etc., so you really had to maximise the tension and get them as even as possible to build a reliable wheel. I think there's probably a bit more leeway now as the parts are better. But the theory of "more tension is better as long as the rim can take it" still seems valid.