OK tonight's wheel building discussion is on "wheel pull up". This is the very first step after you have all of the nipples on the spokes and the wheel is built, but "loose".
Grab a bicycle wheel so you have something in front of you to look at and find what we are talking about.
Go to the Reference wheel photo on post #29, use the second photo. Find the valve hole at 3:00
Find the yellow zip tie at 6:00.
Look at the yellow zip tie pointing at the 5:00 spoke and the spoke next to it at 6:00 (not the zip tied spoke with the brake lever)
I'm going to define those two spokes as the "Cross Over" spokes. Note one goes to each hub flange side, AND they also cross over each other. If you look closely, they repeat by skipping two spokes, then you have two more "Cross Over" spokes. You need to be able to find these two spokes and see that they repeat all the way around the rim.
Take any one of your various "pull-up" #1 or #2 tools, the screwdriver style from Park/DT/or Bicycle Reasearch, or you can try out your drill motor driven spoke pull up bit and tighten ONLY the Cross Over spokes you just located. Assuming you have chosen the correct length spoke size from Marty's nice spoke collection, when you use the pull up bit, or screwdriver it will kick out from the nipple at a point that it is not over. or under tightened. You are only going to tighten 18 spokes in your 36 spoke wheel. The Two Cross Over spokes, skip two spokes, and tighten the next two Cross Over spokes. Repeat the two tighten, two skip, two tighten, two skip all the way around the rim. If the spoke length was correct, you will have a wheel that is almost snug, you were able to make it all the way around the rim before it got "too tight", the wheel will be "round", and the wheel will be "straight", and the rim will be "centered" with in the width of the axle spacing. Yes, frigging MAJIC. Next you have to go back and tighten the remaining 18 of the 36 spokes. The wheel will remain round, straight, and centered. If you tighten the spokes as Marty explained by equally tightening all the spokes in sequence around the rim, you will be able to tension it, but it will not be round, straight, and centered. The wheel is not done yet, but it well on the way for final truing by hand in a truing stand.
By taking the few seconds extra to find the Cross Over spokes, and pulling them up first, you will save yourself tons of time when you get to the final truing step. Truing is a four-part process. #1 The wheel needs to end up with the proper spoke tension. They actually make spoke tension gauges to test the spoke tension. Not important on a Beach Cruiser, but it is on a Pro Wheel with a lightweight rim. #2 The wheel needs to be straight rolling. #3 The wheel needs to have no "hop", we are not building clown bike wheels. #4 The wheel needs to have the distance between the hub lock nuts come out exactly centered in the middle of the rim. Any one of these four requirements is fairly easy to obtain. Getting all four of them at the SAME TIME is the hard part. My advice is not to work on any one of them, but to work on all four of them at one time. By that I mean, do the one that is the farthest off. If it's roundness, work on that just a little, then check the "side to side" runout, pull in the high's, and let out the low's. Make sure the center is close, while keeping an eye on the overall spoke tension. Too tight a wheel, will break spokes, just as "too loose a wheel "will break spokes. Proper tension is important. It's easy to add more tension at the end after you have the wheel in round, centered, and straight. In my experience, it's best to jump back in forth between all four objectives.
You should be able to fill the hub with spokes, lace the spokes into the wheel rim, and "pull up" the wheel to 80%-90% true and straight in under ten minutes. In the Schwinn factory (1958) they filled and laced the wheels by hand but used an oil pressure driven Holland truing machine. They had to build 5000 to 7000 wheels every day to keep the assembly lines supplied.
Tomorrow night we will discuss another wheel building topic.
If you have questions, someone will know the answer.
John