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Spoke tension tool


AustinBike
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New wheel on the way. Can’t decide whether to drop the old one off for a re-tension or just buy the tool and do it myself.

for those of you with the tool, do you really use it enough or was it a one time thing? Not looking to borrow one because if I am going to take the time to really learn how to use it, I’ll want my own tool. 

Just want to know bang for the buck on actually buying one. 

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3 minutes ago, AustinBike said:

New wheel on the way. Can’t decide whether to drop the old one off for a re-tension or just buy the tool and do it myself.

for those of you with the tool, do you really use it enough or was it a one time thing? Not looking to borrow one because if I am going to take the time to really learn how to use it, I’ll want my own tool. 

Just want to know bang for the buck on actually buying one. 

chief is your guy on this one

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The Park tool didn't seem that expensive.  I've built and relaced wheels.  For me I just need to do something one time to have the excuse to buy a tool.  In general it pays off in one use for home tools.  Not so for bike tools...but I like to treat myself to cool tools.  I have the Park Tool tension meter and also a speed winder for the nipples. I know you said you didn't want to borrow one, but you're welcome to it.

One alternative I thought about is a guitar tuner.  It works really well for checking the spokes against each other.  What that doesn't do though is tell you whether you are violating the wheel, or the hub spoke limits.  In my experience, that's important for a wheel that is going to stay true without breaking spokes.  I also think there are some plain incompatible combinations of spokes, wheels, and hubs in my experience.

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6 hours ago, mack_turtle said:

Take a cheap flat screw driver and cut/ grind right angles out of the tip. Leave a point 2mm long in the middle. File it round. Now you have a nipple driver in five minutes.

I have one of those too.  In fact, I have all sorts of custom tools for different needs made out of modified tools.

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I've found the most important things in wheel tension are making sure all the spokes are within 5% of each other and not exceeding the max tension for the rim. I have the Park tension meter and use it every time I build a set of wheels. Tension is more important than trueness. A properly tensioned wheel will stay true longer than one with tension all over the place. Tensioning by sound is ok for me if I'm on the trail and have an incident where I need to tighten a spoke but for actual building it's not that reliable. I've always found that I over tension the wheel when doing it by ear. Park also has an app for wheel tension that's pretty cool to make sure your spokes are evenly tensioned. The tension meter can also help you determine if a rim is repairable or just complete garbage. Aluminum wheels that have been severely taco'ed can only be re trued and evenly tensioned to an extent, as for carbon once the spoke tension is removed the rim goes back to its true state and can be re trued and evenly tensioned many times. 

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I have an old Wheelsmith tensionmeter I really like, and use all the time. I actually bought four Parks for work a while back and they showed up reading 40kgf different from each other. I sent them back to be recalibrated, they returned with a business card someone scribbled "a-ok" on and still had a 30kgf spread. Needless to say I can recommend that thing, unless you feel like finding a way to actually calibrate it correctly.

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BPNs experience is exactly what concerns me. What's the point of a precision tool if it's not accurate? Or an accurate tool that loses it precision?

The Park one is under $100 and there are a bunch of copycats for under $50. Anything that I would trust is over $400. Not worthwhile for the home mechanic, unless you have money to burn or you destroy/ rebuild a LOT of wheels.

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I’d say that the most important thing about spoke tension is consistency (precision) not accuracy. Unless you plan on swapping tension gauges after you do half the spokes on the wheel, the gauges can differ by some %. Sure, it would be great if they were all perfect and read exactly the same but do you want to pay $50 or $500 for one? Personally, I just try and get the tension near the recommended range for the spoke and then focus on getting all the spokes close to each other.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

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3 minutes ago, Tree Magnet said:

I’d say that the most important thing about spoke tension is consistency (precision) not accuracy. Unless you plan on swapping tension gauges after you do half the spokes on the wheel, the gauges can differ by some %. Sure, it would be great if they were all perfect and read exactly the same but do you want to pay $50 or $500 for one? Personally, I just try and get the tension near the recommended range for the spoke and then focus on getting all the spokes close to each other.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

You say that until you spend $500 on a rim who's warranty will be void if it's not tensioned properly.

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