So close... wheel woes

The tires on my bike are getting quite long in tooth. I need some new rubber for the road.This shouldn't be a problem. I have the "spare" set of wheels that I had built for my by Woody's Wheel Works and a set of tires that were waiting to get used.No problem.I hauled the stuff up to the family room and spooned on the rear tire. Once I remembered how to do it it went on pretty painlessly. I went to seat the bead and luckily I noticed the problem: I was seeing bubbles from the spoke nipples.This is as you can imagine a problem.The wheels that Woody built me were magic in a way. These were conventional spoked wheels (BMW has their own magic) that normally need a tube to run correctly. The magic was some goop that Woody added to the drop center of the wheel to seal it up tight.

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These wheels have a history to them.I got them after I broke the stock front wheel on the Alaska trip in 2008. These were bombproof wheels. Lighter and stronger than stock. These went with me on the ill-fated Labrador trip in 2009. They got written off after the epic crash.I tracked down the guy that got the salvaged bike and traded new BMW wheels for the custom set back in 2010.There they sat in the shipping boxes. I didn't feel the motivation to spoon on new tires while the ones on the bike were still OK.

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Hopefully Woody still does the magic. If not I can run tubes in the tubeless tires and call it a day... I just hope not to get a flat.