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A 70 year old mechanic in Dayton showed me why I was snapping rear spokes on my wheel builds
Three years ago I built up a rear wheel for a commuter bike and popped two spokes in the first 200 miles. I kept blaming the spokes and buying heavier ones. Last month a retired builder named Walt at a shop in Dayton watched me tension a wheel and stopped me cold. He said I was stress relieving wrong, just squeezing the spokes with my bare hands instead of using a proper tool or even a block of wood on the spoke crosses. Walt grabbed an old piece of oak and showed me the right motion, and I have not popped a spoke since. If you have ever chased a mystery spoke failure, what ended up being the real fix for you?
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the_leo1mo ago
I get why that felt like the answer, but squeezing spokes by hand is exactly what I have done for years on dozens of builds and I have never snapped one because of it. Stress relieving matters way less than getting even tension around the whole wheel, and most "mystery" spoke breaks are really just one side wound up tighter than the other. Walt probably fixed your wheel by redoing your tension, not by handing you a piece of oak.
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