Roger Musson's truing stand
 

I recently bought Roger Musson's wheelbuilding book, and am interested building a truing stand following his design. From my searches, it seems that at least of a few of you are using this stand (and generally seem quite happy with it). So, for those of you who've built one of these, are there any issues you've run into/modifications you'd recommend? Pictures would be nice, too.

Also, I've seen a number of mentions of people using a dial indicator in place of the guides, which looks like a good idea. Is there anything particular I should look for in an indicator? Any recommended source for them?

Thanks.

Ian - Have been using an inverted fork for years and years along with a dial indicator... you can usually get these fairly cheaply at some of the discount parts stores here in the city.

You can make due with one and can show you my set up one day.

In other news... it looks like we will be building some 451 wheels as finding tyres for those 500a wheels looks like it is going to be fairly difficult.

I've seen the pictures of your fork setup. My family has a decent wood shop (my dad just got his hands on an old Shopmate that he's quite proud of), so I figured the Musson stand would be a fun project for either my dad or for myself over winter break.

As for the wheels, I would have been pretty surprised if tires were available. I was planning on alloy wheels anyway, so 451 makes a lot more sense. I may try to scavenge that coaster wheel in the mean time, but that'll have to wait until a few deadlines are dealt with. Now to go post some pictures on the folding forum...

As far as dial indicators are concerned, I'd recomment a dial type versus a digital. With the very precise digital ones, as you spin the wheel, no matter how slowly, the numbers fly by so fast, you lose your perspective. I'd imagine with a clockface dial type, you could set the zero at a certain point, a more visually intuitive manner, so the pointer points left of zero when the rim needs to move left, and right of zero when the rim needs to move right.

The analog dial indicator is preferable and when I worked in a machine shop verniers and dial based calipers were the preferred tool... good digital calipers are more costly and fragile and reading them can be difficult.

My near vision is poor and after a certain point the dial indicator makes that final truing up much easier even if I don;t have my glasses on.

If you've poked around here at BF, you probably have already seen pictures of my Musson stand. But I'll post it again for you. As mentioned above, if your near vision is poor than a dial indicator may be preferable, but I built mine to Roger's exact specs and have been able to do excellent work with his visual gauges. The reason I feel that the dial gauges are optional is that tension balance is so much more important than perfect true, and with rims rarely being absolutely perfect, the detectable tolerances of a visual gauge are more than adequate for building a proper wheel. I tend to be obsessive about stuff, so having a dial gauge that would show me minuscule deviations would be maddening. I can see changes of .1-.2 mm deviation with the visual gauges, which is more than enough accuracy for a well built (balanced) wheel.

The only shortfall of the stand is the absence of a dishing gauge...which for me hasn't been a problem either. As you'll see in Roger's book, plans for a dishing gauge are also present, so with a good woodshop and some thin/light material you'll be able to whip that tool up far quicker than the truing stand. I haven't even built the dishing gauge, and simply take measurements from the tower to one side, flip the wheel and measure again from the same tower. Simple enough and will give you plenty of accuracy for dishing. If your towers are perfectly square and the upsidedown "dropouts" are exactly level, you can get rough dish simply by measuring inward from each tower to the braking surfaces...then flip the wheel and measure that way just to be sure. I've been very happy with the simplicity of the stand, and feel like it was definitely worth my time in building. It's very quick to use because the gauges are movable to where you need them, and adaptable to any size wheels without making adjustments. Slide the tower to the proper axle length and you're ready to go. I built mine out of standard 3/4 inch plywood, and finished it in clear polyurethane. Nothing fancy, but the finished product looks great. If you have access to some nicer material and have the initiative to stain and finish it, you could easily make a stand that's both beautiful and greatly functional. Please let us know how it goes and post pictures of it when you finish. I apologize to all who have seen this picture over and over again here. =) I had a lot of fun building it and enjoy sharing and encouraging others to do the same. =)

-Jeremy

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e2...Standsmall.jpg