spoke count

[Bianchi Boy]

A final comment is that I most commonly use a variant of Brandt's stress relief technique; instead of squeezing the crossings in the plane of the wheel, I squeeze the crossings  towards one another i.e. at ninety degrees to the Brandt squeeze. I think I originally started doing this due to a misunderstanding; however it seems to work at least as well if not better, because it is less likely to leave a bad nipple kink which can happen in some cases otherwise. The J bend may also be better set to suit wheel this way, too.

Could you please explain the stress relief method? I am not familiar with the Brant method or the variant you describe. I use an old crank and bend the spoke downwards and then do parallel spokes together.
BB

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[Brucey]

Brandt's method is explained in his book (best to buy it in print but I think  there is a hooky pdf download somewhere if you look) and looks a bit like this



The method I usually use applies the load at right angles to this (i.e. parallel to the axle), at the spoke crossings.

In theory it is similar to the stress-relief loading applied by some wheel building machines eg



where the side wheels are pushed against the spokes,  but in reality some wheels that are built in such machines still break spokes, so either there is an intrinsic  difference in stress relief so produced, or the conditions used are substantially different in some way.

cheers