Chinese spoke tension meters

[chris667]

Hello all

About ten years ago, I used to have a really nice set of bike tools. Unfortunately, some scrote stole them all one day.

I had spent years collecting them and I was gutted. I still find myself thinking of some of them when I have jobs to do, then reach for my toolbox and do a little turn.

I'm going to start fixing my bikes again and I see there are quite a few copies of my old Park spoke tension meter like this:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304415151595?hash=item46e08e95eb:g:QhUAAOSwdeRiP7Ge

Anyone tried one? Any good?

[rogerzilla]

The phone app is supposed to be very accurate.

[chris667]

Oh, that's new!

It would mean my owning a smartphone.

[rogerzilla]

Ah.  It's supposed to be more accurate than the Park meter, but would be more expensive if you had to buy a phone.

I think all the physical meters suffer from poor calibration.  If you could rig up a way to suspend your weight from a single spoke, you could check the kgf figure, but that would require a bit of metalwork.

[Ripio]

Anyone tried one? Any good?

I've got something similar although it wasn't bought from China, probably made there though.
It's not particularly accurate as far as I can tell but it is useable to a reasonable degree.
Suffers a bit from 'stiction' errors so you have to double check each reading.
I've built a few wheels using it for checking consistency of tension and ballpark actual tension, but I always end up thinking I should get something better.

[Pedal Castro]

I've got one like that, not sure of the make I'll check when I get home.

I don't worry about the numbers as such, just use it to ensure the spokes are evenly tensioned.

[chris667]

It's alright, folks! I have managed to cajole my smartphone owning other half to get the tensioning app.

I will report back! It strikes me the microphone might be an issue, but let's see.

[Pedal Castro]

Which app is that?

[LittleWheelsandBig]

https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=117807 is what I use. There may be others.