I’ll post a full review when the Kashima Coated rigid forks actually exist and aren’t merely a sticker.

…Except I forgot to take photos of him. But Jarod got this one as he was waiting for me (for 10 minutes…) on the other side of the road.

Hopefully the home made cookie cutter will work better with sugar cookies Liz is planning on making.

Though it was only the non-drive side which the spokes had undone itself, I wasn’t sure any of the spokes had the right tension, so I loosened them all and started the wheel from scratch. With Sheldon Brown as my co-pilot, I slowly retensioned the spokes while keeping the rim in lateral and vertical true. I should mention that as I lack a Wheel Truing Stand, I used the bike frame and some well measured duct tape as my guide. It’s a bit more cumbersome, but it does the job fine.

Truing a wheel is slow but I wouldn’t call it overly difficult. I’d bet anyone could true a wheel if they understand and follow the process and are precise in the adjustments they make.

I got the wheel to within acceptable limits but I was able to borrow a Park Tools TM-1 Spoke Tension Meter and that wasn’t a gadget I was going to turn down. This resulted in another half hour of spoke tweaking and more importantly, spreadsheet tinkering.

Ideally, all the spokes going to the same side of the hub will be the same tension but in reality this doesn’t happen, doubly so as my rim had already been ridden for a few hundred kilometres. This means each spoke has to have a slightly different tension to compensate for the wobble in the rim. As you go around the rim the difference in tension between spokes going to the same side of the hub should be constant. Sharp spikes in tension are not your friend. Now, let us refer to the spreadsheet generated graph.

Blue and yellow lines are the values from the Spoke Tension Meter (for the Disc and Drive side of the wheel) before the final tuning and the red and green lines were taken after the final tuning. Notice how the red line is more constant than the blue one? That’s because I was going around the rim and evening out the tension between spokes. Loosen one side, tighten the other, rinse, repeat. My method of measuring the deviation while spinning the wheel was also refined. Plastic clips and a set of verniers to measure the dish.

The wheel ran as true before and after, but now I’m left with an (arguably) stronger wheel as the tension between spokes has smooth transitions.

As far as bike tools go, a spoke tension meter is definitely on my to buy list. They’re seriously cool.

And sometimes it’s just easier to sit on the kitchen floor than to make breakfast.

Tender human flesh to bite. Om nom nom!!!