This has been bugging me for a long time. Finally I splashed some money and dedicated some time to wheel building gear. Essentially I combined some DIY tools with more expensive bits. So far I managed to just try it, but looks like all will work great together.
At the moment I have a very basic truing stand from ParkTool (TS-8). Which does the job, but ultimately I want to make my own one (second covid lock down… stay tuned). The rest of the gear I’m pretty happy with and goes as follow:
The most expensive bit in my weaponry is from now on Hozan – spoke threading tool C-702-22 with heads for 13, 14 and 15 gauge spokes.
So far I can’t say anything about usage that much, as really I did some testing only, but quality looks second to none. I’m big fan of Japanese engineering, this is one of the finest example. I havd really a choice, between Weldtite (cyclo) threading tool, and Hozan, but after watching some photos and videos, I decided to splash some more money to have it from Hozan. Speaking of the purchase. I ordered it from a place called Plaza Japan and took 6 weeks to deliver it to UK. Not too bad as purchased during lockdown. The only annoying thing is the duty and other crap, like handling fee, etc I had to pay (fricking £69!). All in all the tool was 20 quid shy of £300. Bloody expensive, but I have what I wanted. As a bonus, the original box, came wrapped in Japanese newspapers, so we tested google lens. Amazing and exotic 😉
To that I finally added a DIY dishing tool. I was sick and tired of other methods (two beer cans and coins etc…). Really self explanatory how I made it, if you look at the photos. I had all the alloy pieces already (leftover from other projects). The job was really to cut with angle grinder slots for adjusting to different wheel sizes. I’m quite happy how it works.
Final bit, which makes the whole building procedure faster are nipple handling tools. After googling a bit I decided to go for IceToolz nipple pick. I bought two of them. One will be used as per original design – to pick up nipple and place it initially on the spoke. The second one I modified slightly to act as a nipple driver. Literally replaced the spring with a piece of wire (I had to drill slightly bigger hole). This way I can use it alone like that to turn a nipple (even without a handle) or put it on an electric screwdriver if I need to.
Future project (apart from truing stand) I’ll make a spoke tension calibration tool. I already have a digital scale up to 200kg. All I need to figure out is a frame and spoke/nipple clamping method. This way I can calibrate my cheap Chinese spoke tensiometer quite accurately without relying on the provided table, which (I got feeling) is not really precise 😉
Stay tuned, and keep’em rolling.
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