DT Tensiometer

On Oct 22, 4:57*pm, Dan O wrote:
On Oct 22, 4:34 am, Chalo wrote:

Danny Obermeyer wrote:

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this.
First- I am assuming that the DT is the best- it is what I used while
working at a couple of shops on the east coast over the past 10 or so
years...
I don't need one. Not right now. But I do want one right now.

I have a DT Tensio of my own. *But nineteen times out of twenty, I'll
use the Park tensiometer instead because it's easier to read and has a
more intuitive scale.

I couldn't afford DT. *Couldn't *really* afford even Park, but bought
one anyway, and am glad I did.

I'm glad I bought this carton of Don Simon orange juice. It's quite
tasty and provides valuable nutrition for me. It's also rather a
pretty carton witha picture of an orange tree and the carton contains
15 oranges. Hmm, there's quite a bit of info on the back, I'll have a
read.

On Oct 22, 12:34*pm, Chalo wrote:
Danny Obermeyer wrote:

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this.
First- I am assuming that the DT is the best- it is what I used while
working at a couple of shops on the east coast over the past 10 or so
years...
I don't need one. Not right now. But I do want one right now.

I have a DT Tensio of my own. *But nineteen times out of twenty, I'll
use the Park tensiometer instead because it's easier to read and has a
more intuitive scale.

Chalo

I understand what Danny is talking about. I'm a toolfondler. I was
eyeing the DT meter. But I'm planning to build only one wheel. If
Chalo finds the Park tensiometer for a quarter the price of the DT
Tensiometer does the job more convenienlty, that's good enough for me.

Andre Jute
A rational decision

On Oct 22, 8:32 pm, Andre Jute wrote:
On Oct 22, 12:34 pm, Chalo wrote:

Danny Obermeyer wrote:

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this.
First- I am assuming that the DT is the best- it is what I used while
working at a couple of shops on the east coast over the past 10 or so
years...
I don't need one. Not right now. But I do want one right now.

I have a DT Tensio of my own. But nineteen times out of twenty, I'll
use the Park tensiometer instead because it's easier to read and has a
more intuitive scale.

Chalo

I understand what Danny is talking about. I'm a toolfondler.

And yt, you advise me to settle for significantly sub-optimal
lighting.

(What kind of wris****ch are you wearing?)

(... my friend)

was
eyeing the DT meter. But I'm planning to build only one wheel. If
Chalo finds the Park tensiometer for a quarter the price of the DT
Tensiometer does the job more convenienlty, that's good enough for me.


Even if you only ever build one wheel, you may find the tensiometer a
good investment for maintaining wheels with nice, even tension.

On Oct 23, 8:27*pm, Dan O wrote:
On Oct 22, 8:32 pm, Andre Jute wrote:









On Oct 22, 12:34 pm, Chalo wrote:

Danny Obermeyer wrote:

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this.
First- I am assuming that the DT is the best- it is what I used while
working at a couple of shops on the east coast over the past 10 or so
years...
I don't need one. Not right now. But I do want one right now.

I have a DT Tensio of my own. *But nineteen times out of twenty, I'll
use the Park tensiometer instead because it's easier to read and has a
more intuitive scale.

Chalo

I understand what Danny is talking about. I'm a toolfondler.

And yt, you advise me to settle for significantly sub-optimal
lighting.

(What kind of wris****ch are you wearing?)

(... my friend)

*was
eyeing the DT meter. But I'm planning to build only one wheel. If
Chalo finds the Park tensiometer for a quarter the price of the DT
Tensiometer does the job more convenienlty, that's good enough for me.

Even if you only ever build one wheel, you may find the tensiometer a
good investment for maintaining wheels with nice, even tension.

If you build the wheel well and glue the nipples, the wheels do not
need the spoke tension maintaining if you leave the spokes alone. Oil
the hubs, clean the rims and check generally for damage but don't go
tweaking the spokes for the sake of it.

On Oct 23, 12:57*pm, thirty-six wrote:
On Oct 23, 8:27*pm, Dan O wrote:





On Oct 22, 8:32 pm, Andre Jute wrote:

On Oct 22, 12:34 pm, Chalo wrote:

Danny Obermeyer wrote:

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this.
First- I am assuming that the DT is the best- it is what I used while
working at a couple of shops on the east coast over the past 10 or so
years...
I don't need one. Not right now. But I do want one right now.

I have a DT Tensio of my own. *But nineteen times out of twenty, I'll
use the Park tensiometer instead because it's easier to read and has a
more intuitive scale.

Chalo

I understand what Danny is talking about. I'm a toolfondler.

And yt, you advise me to settle for significantly sub-optimal
lighting.

(What kind of wris****ch are you wearing?)

(... my friend)

*was
eyeing the DT meter. But I'm planning to build only one wheel. If
Chalo finds the Park tensiometer for a quarter the price of the DT
Tensiometer does the job more convenienlty, that's good enough for me..

Even if you only ever build one wheel, you may find the tensiometer a
good investment for maintaining wheels with nice, even tension.

If you build the wheel well and glue the nipples, the wheels do not
need the spoke tension maintaining if you leave the spokes alone. *Oil
the hubs, clean the rims and check generally for damage but don't go
tweaking the spokes for the sake of it.- Hide quoted text -

It's nice to have the tensiometer, but if you're in to the building
one wheel scenario, its not a good investment. Go feel some well
built wheels to get a sense of proper tension, then work towards that
and balance by tone and use some nipple goop. Or maybe borrow one --
which could be done in my neighborhood, along with every other tool
known to human kind. My riding buddy and next door neighbor is an
engineer in the bicycle business and has a lot of arcane tools,
although he borrows my tensiometer. He doesn't have a lot of plain
old wire spoked wheels -- mostly pre fab stuff, so he doesn't borrow
it a lot.

One fun use of a tensiometer is checking the tension of my pre-
tensiometer wheels -- like an old E2 wheel I was going to thrown on my
son's bike. That thing was at about 175 kgf. Dang. I'm going to
relax that and rebuild with some goop so I can get more life out of
the rim. Unlike other olde tymers, I have cracked E2 rims -- and in
fact yanked spoke sockets right through the rim on one.

-- Jay Beattie.

Jay Beattie wrote:

It's nice to have the tensiometer, but if you're in to the building
one wheel scenario, its not a good investment. Go feel some well
built wheels to get a sense of proper tension, then work towards that
and balance by tone and use some nipple goop.

I use various non-lightweight rims, and have built many wheels with
never a crack and hardly ever a broken spoke. For me, precise spoke
tension doesn't seem to be critical. I just work by feel and judgment.

But speaking of "balance by tone," if you are enough of a musician to
have either an electronic tuner, or some conveniently portable
instrument, you could pluck the spokes of a known good wheel of similar
build, and determine the pitch of the tone. Use that for reference when
building your own wheels.

--
- Frank Krygowski

Jay Beattie wrote:
On Oct 22, 8:50 am, Danny Obermeyer wrote:
On Oct 22, 8:31 am, landotter wrote:

Dealer cost will be significantly less. That said, you can build
perfectly great wheels with the far less expensive TM-1, especially
if you use your ear to confirm its readings. The more expensive
tool is nice--but overkill for most.

Thanks everyone for your responses- very helpful.
To be certain, I would never sell a wheelset as a quality item based
on its spoke tension. I'm sure there are shops that supply a
laminated chart of the measured tension for each spoke, as well as a
star chart that shows the alignment of the planets as they were when
the final bit of stress was relieved from the wheel. Right- it's
meaningless to a person who just wants to ride their bike. However,
I like to use a tensiometer as a referential gauge of what my hands
are up to. Yeah, we built great wheels in 1988 without them. Is it
nice to have another metric to keep track of? In my humble opinion,
yes. I'm not an engineer, and I vow to never get in the way of the
data!
Thanks again,
Dan

I think tensiometers are SOP these days, no appologies required. The
Jobst soft-taco model for determining spoke tension no longer works,
and manufacturers are now spec'ing spoke tension -- unlike 30 years
ago when the Book was written. Rims crack more easily now, IMO. I
have cracked probably a half-dozen modern rims by running them above
manufacturers'
recommended tension (as measured with a tensiometer and done
intentionally to avoid detensioning) and learned that you have to stay
in spec' and have to resort to other means of keeping the wheel
straight -- lighter spokes, heavier rims, thread goop, etc. The days
of 120mm hubs and ModE rims wound up to tensions just below rim
deformation are behind us. It has taken me a long time to get over old
habits.

-- Jay Beattie.

I've been building wheels for some years and I've yet to find any spoke tension
recommendations on any rim manufacturers websites. Maybe I'm using the wrong
manufacturers. The one's I've used give ERD, width, weight, profile, etc. but
not recommended spoke tension. It does not bother me because I rely on my ears,
accumulated experience, commonsense and a Park tensionometer in that order to
tension my wheels. However, I often see Usenet people write about manufacturers
recommended tension but nobody ever says what it is for a given rim or provides
a link to where it may be found. Who can enlighten me?

PH

Peter Howard wrote:
Jay Beattie wrote:
On Oct 22, 8:50 am, Danny Obermeyer wrote:
On Oct 22, 8:31 am, landotter wrote:

Dealer cost will be significantly less. That said, you can build
perfectly great wheels with the far less expensive TM-1, especially
if you use your ear to confirm its readings. The more expensive
tool is nice--but overkill for most.

Thanks everyone for your responses- very helpful.
To be certain, I would never sell a wheelset as a quality item based
on its spoke tension. I'm sure there are shops that supply a
laminated chart of the measured tension for each spoke, as well as a
star chart that shows the alignment of the planets as they were when
the final bit of stress was relieved from the wheel. Right- it's
meaningless to a person who just wants to ride their bike. However,
I like to use a tensiometer as a referential gauge of what my hands
are up to. Yeah, we built great wheels in 1988 without them. Is it
nice to have another metric to keep track of? In my humble opinion,
yes. I'm not an engineer, and I vow to never get in the way of the
data!
Thanks again,
Dan

I think tensiometers are SOP these days, no appologies required. The
Jobst soft-taco model for determining spoke tension no longer works,
and manufacturers are now spec'ing spoke tension -- unlike 30 years
ago when the Book was written. Rims crack more easily now, IMO. I
have cracked probably a half-dozen modern rims by running them above
manufacturers'
recommended tension (as measured with a tensiometer and done
intentionally to avoid detensioning) and learned that you have to stay
in spec' and have to resort to other means of keeping the wheel
straight -- lighter spokes, heavier rims, thread goop, etc. The days
of 120mm hubs and ModE rims wound up to tensions just below rim
deformation are behind us. It has taken me a long time to get over old
habits.

-- Jay Beattie.

I've been building wheels for some years and I've yet to find any spoke
tension recommendations on any rim manufacturers websites. Maybe I'm
using the wrong manufacturers. The one's I've used give ERD, width,
weight, profile, etc. but not recommended spoke tension. It does not
bother me because I rely on my ears, accumulated experience, commonsense
and a Park tensionometer in that order to tension my wheels. However, I
often see Usenet people write about manufacturers recommended tension
but nobody ever says what it is for a given rim or provides a link to
where it may be found. Who can enlighten me?

PH


I agree with your tensioning technique and do find a Park tool helpful
and sometimes enlightening.

When building my last wheel, using Velocity Aerohead OC rims, I
contacted Velocity and asked them what the spoke tension spec should be.
They told me and that is what I targeted (and confirmed with the Park tool).

Part of my interest in all of this was that I have had several wheels
built with NOS Mavic MA-40 rims fail (a well known situation) and when I
took them to a Mavic dealer, the first thing they did was put a tension
meter on the wheel and try to pawn the problem off on too high a spoke
tension (which there wasn't). In one case they gave me a new rim. In all
other cases they just said these are super old rims. The fact that they
had little wear indicated made no difference in their efforts to send me
swiftly out the door. I am trying to avoid Mavic rims now. Just my $0.02

Peter Howard wrote:
Jay Beattie wrote:
On Oct 22, 8:50 am, Danny Obermeyer wrote:
On Oct 22, 8:31 am, landotter wrote:

Dealer cost will be significantly less. That said, you can build
perfectly great wheels with the far less expensive TM-1, especially
if you use your ear to confirm its readings. The more expensive
tool is nice--but overkill for most.

Thanks everyone for your responses- very helpful.
To be certain, I would never sell a wheelset as a quality item based
on its spoke tension. I'm sure there are shops that supply a
laminated chart of the measured tension for each spoke, as well as a
star chart that shows the alignment of the planets as they were when
the final bit of stress was relieved from the wheel. Right- it's
meaningless to a person who just wants to ride their bike. However,
I like to use a tensiometer as a referential gauge of what my hands
are up to. Yeah, we built great wheels in 1988 without them. Is it
nice to have another metric to keep track of? In my humble opinion,
yes. I'm not an engineer, and I vow to never get in the way of the
data!
Thanks again,
Dan

I think tensiometers are SOP these days, no appologies required. The
Jobst soft-taco model for determining spoke tension no longer works,
and manufacturers are now spec'ing spoke tension -- unlike 30 years
ago when the Book was written. Rims crack more easily now, IMO. I
have cracked probably a half-dozen modern rims by running them above
manufacturers'
recommended tension (as measured with a tensiometer and done
intentionally to avoid detensioning) and learned that you have to stay
in spec' and have to resort to other means of keeping the wheel
straight -- lighter spokes, heavier rims, thread goop, etc. The days
of 120mm hubs and ModE rims wound up to tensions just below rim
deformation are behind us. It has taken me a long time to get over old
habits.

-- Jay Beattie.

I've been building wheels for some years and I've yet to find any spoke
tension recommendations on any rim manufacturers websites. Maybe I'm
using the wrong manufacturers. The one's I've used give ERD, width,
weight, profile, etc. but not recommended spoke tension. It does not
bother me because I rely on my ears, accumulated experience, commonsense
and a Park tensionometer in that order to tension my wheels. However, I
often see Usenet people write about manufacturers recommended tension
but nobody ever says what it is for a given rim or provides a link to
where it may be found. Who can enlighten me?


A google search yields...

http://www.tech-mavic.com/tech-mavic...eplacement.pdf

--
JS.

David White wrote:

Part of my interest in all of this was that I have had several wheels
built with NOS Mavic MA-40 rims fail (a well known situation) and when I
took them to a Mavic dealer, the first thing they did was put a tension
meter on the wheel and try to pawn the problem off on too high a spoke
tension (which there wasn't). In one case they gave me a new rim. In all
other cases they just said these are super old rims. The fact that they
had little wear indicated made no difference in their efforts to send me
* swiftly out the door. I am trying to avoid Mavic rims now.

That's an infallible way to avoid the problems Mavic rims often have
and others don't. I've been using that method for years now with good
results.

Chalo