Wheel truing. Where to start?

[migrantwing]

I am going to have a go at this on my old wheels. Old fork stuck in a workbench and a cable tie as a rim indicator.

I understand radial and lateral true, dish etc but where is a good starting point? Spoke tension first or getting a wheel true first, radially or laterally? I understand that all these things affect one another, so where is the best place to start and what to do to proceed afterwards?

TIA

 

[Herzog]

Here...?

 

[the snail]

If you're just fixing a wheel that's gone out of true then you shouldn't need to worry about radial truing or dishing. Just equalise tension then true, and repeat both until it's true and the tensions are even.

 

[MrGrumpy]

Did mine on the bike easy peasy however gone out again but think my tension not correct. What I`ve gathered is that its usually one spoke maybe two which have caused it to go out of true, so don`t go nuts with the spoke key!!

 

[andrew_s]

When building up a wheel from scratch, get radial right first, then get it reasonably straight laterally, then adjust the dish by making the same change to all the spokes on one side of the wheel, then do the fine lateral truth. If it's then not tight enough, go round the wheel tightening all the spokes by the same number of turns of the nipple, then re-do the lateral truth.
It's not easy to make sizeable changes to radial truth with a wheel that's close to its final tension, and similarly a wheel doesn't usually go out of radial truth except if you hit a pothole hard enough to bend the rim.

When I used to use frame/forks in a Workmate, I used (full) tin cans on the workbench as pointers. Compared to a cable tie, they are easier to move, stay put well, and make a scraping noise when the rim touches them so you can watch the wheel position rather than the pointer gap.
I built my most accurate ever wheel that way, to 0.1 mm radially except for 0.2 at the joint, and better than 0.1 mm laterally. Pity I hadn't discovered the damaging effect of Shimano brake block back then, so the rim wore out after 6000 miles. I never bothered with that accuracy again - it was a fair bit of extra time for no perceptible benefit.