Wheel building essentials?
 

Taking a big bite!

Okay, so I'm gonna order this:

TS 2.2 stand

TSB-2.2 base

TM-1 tensioner

ND-1 driver

WAG-4 dish thingy

Any idea what nipple driver I need for Sapim polyax brass nipples?
Searcing the ole tool box I found a SW15 and SW19...I think I used these on my Campag wheels.

Do I need the micrometers or just eyeball it?

Nothing else I need?

TIA

That's a good start
 

Will you be building for customers professionally, or just your own wheels? Your listed equipment isn't cheap, and there's plenty of opportunity to save money if it's not going to be a major offering from you. OTOH, if you're offering professional builds, a gauge tensiometer like wheel fanatyk's can help you dial in absolute tension. A dish stick is good for getting dish dialed in to under a millimeter quickly, but not necessary with a stand that also centers. You'll need to decide about the micrometer. Spoke lengths can tolerate some variation, but performing your own quality control on spoke gauge can help you even tension out easily, and build wheels that stay true longer.

IMO the aids all exist to make the job easier and therefore faster. If time is money, saving time is worth a few extra bucks.

This is professional quality stuff.

I've built plenty of wheels with nothing but a spoke wrench and flathead screwdriver. Some were very good wheels. I now use a Park clone I got for $150. It came with better wrenches than Park makes.

I've never had any structural problems -spoke breakage, dish, cracking, or ovals.

If I was selling rims, I'd use better tools so I could justify to the customer the price. I don't think all those tools will make your wheels any better once you get the hang of it.

^ +1. Spoke wrench and flathead screwdriver are the only essential tools, but nice tools are satisfying to use. :)

I'd call or email the place you're ordering from and ask about the spoke wrench that fits the Sapim nipple you want.

FWIW, the Park Master spoke wrench (SW-20.2 or 22.2) is much nicer than the SW-0 and its cousins, IME.

I've been using a $30 cheapo stand for 30 years. An equally cheap dishing tool that I modified so I no longer have to remover the QR or track nut. The colored Park spoke wrenches. I did buy a Park tensioner but matching the pitch of similarly spoked good wheels works just as well. Made a spoke starter from the threaded half of a spoke, screwing a nipple on backwards tightly (so about three threads stick out; just enough to thread nipples on) and bending a loop handle.

All this probably costs less than the OP's most expensive item.

So...are you starting your own shop, or are you the kind of sort that buys a plasma cutter at the first opportunity just to buy it?


The TM1 is honestly a waste of money. Park should stop even selling it. For the money there are far better tension gauges out there--shoot for $80 you can build your own digital one that will be most accurate and precise both short and long term.

Okay, I found a cheaper stand on Amazon.

Just the stand and the nipple driver for now.

Maybe the Wheel Fanatyk tension gauge.

To add, I've never used one of those dishing tools. Generally, you can flip the wheel around in the stand, or use soup cans on a table, to determine whether the wheel is centered.

Keep in mind that cheaper stands will be flexier. Not a big deal if you know how to avoid it, but this is one of those cases where a pro quality tool can sometimes actually be better for a beginner who doesn't have the experience to know how to compensate for a tool's weaknesses. That said, the Park TS-2.2 is big, expensive, and takes up a lot of space so if you aren't going to have a permanent place to put it, something cheaper that folds up nicely might be better. Just don't touch the rim when taking a reading or you'll have a hard time truing up a wheel on a flexy stand.

And if I could only have a stand, a spoke wrench, and one more tool, it certainly wouldn't be a nipple driver (it would be a tensiometer without question). I have the classic Bicycle Research Tools nipple driver, and it usually gets the spokes way too tight for this stage of the build. The probe that sets the depth of the spoke in the nipple should really be about twice as long, and the Park ND-1 doesn't look any better. I size my spokes on the short side though (i.e. bottom of the screwdriver slot). If you err on the long side so that you have a thread or two of spoke sticking out of the top of the nipple when you're done, then the nipple drivers might work better.

P.S. One tool you forgot about is a spoke ruler. Very handy for double-checking the length of new spokes, especially when ordering custom-cut spokes.

I can't agree with this TM-1 assessment. Using the TM-1 on wheels I build/rebuild has meant going from monthly truing checks to annual touch-ups for me over the last ten years. I broke a spoke last year -- or maybe it was the year before, or the year before that. The TM-1 is the least expensive tensiometer I've seen on the market. It was worth every penny I spent on it (although mine was on sale for $50, IIRC). No, it's not a Fanatyk way to spend four C-notes, but it's a decent tool giving decent results at a decent price.

I've had good results with the TM-1 over the years. When I bought mine it was probably around $40-50, but $80 is getting a little ridiculous for a tool of this style.

By the way, the Wheel Fanatyk tensiometer just had a significant price drop due to them switching to a cheaper indicator (apparently the one they were using was discontinued). It's still around 3x the price of the Park, though. Like the TM-1, I'm sure there are knockoffs that are much cheaper (the Wheel Fanatyk gauge is itself a well-executed implementation of the Jobst Brandt design, which they openly acknowledge)

I like this one. https://www.wheelfanatyk.com/store/pk-lie-spoke-wrench/

Agree. Plus, my TM-1 had a scraping noise (the frame was a little off) and their customer service was tops. Also: the TM-1 is probably now the most popular tension-meter, and so presumably you can compare tensions more accurately.

I'm one of the misers who built my first wheels with zero investment. I used an old frame for a stand, made a pretty nice dishing tool from a piece of bed frame and some spare hardware, and used the spoke wrench I already had. For my second set of wheels I bought a nipple driver for less than $10, and I thought that was worth it. (Those were 40-spoke wheels.)

I have a pretty good musical ear, and even with access to a tension meter now I don't use it much.

I ended up popping for the Park stand.

Also ordered the Wheel Fanatyk gauge.

So from what I've been reading, no need the dish gauge as long as stand is centered?

First job: re build my Campag wheels.

Good luck with it! I feel bad in a way I suggested the wheel fanatyck tension meter because of the cost. :eek: I would be strongly considering a side business building and repairing wheels for that money. You're just missing a spoke cutter and threader for your custom wheel shop ;).
I understand spoke tension is important for the strength of the wheel, but also that there's a wide range of acceptable values for tension. After the wheel firms up, relative tension is more important than absolute values, since you'll be in the acceptable tension range then. A cheaper consistent gauge is adequate for the job for my own wheels.

Good luck in your endeavor, I hope it ends up being a rewarding experience!

I prefer the dishing tool for the final touch.

No worries.
If I didn't know about it, I would have eventually and bought it anyways.
All my other tools are Snap On. I'm just like that.

I'm pretty sure I'll eventually end up with one.

I made this nifty nipple driver out of an old screwdriver and a file handle, and I use two stacks of poker chips on the table for my dishing tool.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...35da448e86.jpg

You don't really even need to center the stand. You just need to reference the rim to one of the two caliper arms (take your pick). Then flip the wheel over and see if the other side of the rim is the same distance from that same indicator. In fact, most of the time with "dual-sided" stands like the Park, the second arm just gets in the way so a lot of users jam a spare spoke wrench into the pivot on the unused arm to keep it as far away from the rim as possible (you can also remove it entirely, it's just one bolt I think). Otherwise the second arm is always bumping into the rim early on in the truing process when the dish and lateral true are still way off.

In fact, there's even a build method (described by Wheel Fanatyk in his blog, IIRC) that relies on keeping the dish way off to the drive side until late in the process. Having the wheel centered over the drive side hub flange is supposed to make radial truing much easier, plus keeps the DS tension relatively low for most of the process. Then you finish off the wheel by tensioning the NDS spokes and pulling the rim to the center. Or maybe it's the other way around. Anyway, I've never tried it but it sounds interesting.

A nipple driver with a usefully long, or adjustable, depth gauge should help keep the wheel relatively straight from the start and hopefully would minimize this problem. I've been eyeing the Problem Solvers one that Wheel Fanatyk sells (I also occasionally get close to impulse buying their tensiometer but so far have been able to stop myself :) ).

The stand SHOULD be centered at the factory, but you can check this. Put in a reasonably good (should be true, doesn't have to be dished exactly) wheel and adjust the arms that indicate the rim. Note the distances on each side. Then flip the wheel and again, note the distances. If they are consistent (that is, you have a 4mm gap on the right, and a 6mm gap on the left, and you get the same 4mmR and 6mmL gaps when you flip the wheel) then the wheel is dished ok. If they are consistent and the distances are the same(e.g. 4mmR and 4mmL), then the wheel is is dished ok, and your TS-2 is centered. If the left and right gaps change when you flip the wheel but are mirror images (4mm L and 6mmR changes to 4mmR and 6mmL) then the wheel is not dished right but your TS-2 is ok. If the gaps are neither consistent nor mirror images, you need to do a little math to center the TM-2.

Or your can spring for the Park centering gauge for truing stands. About 80 bucks. I did, and found out that my centering job had been 1mm off. But you're not supposed to use the TS to get the exact dish.

You should be able to create a dish gage with some pieces of wood (1x2 works) and some all-thread with matching washers and nuts. A long enough piece of wood to span the rim, with spacer blocks glued and/or screwed to the ends to give you spacing. Then you drill a hole in the center and install the all-thread (threaded rod) with washers and nuts. In fact, if you drill your hole a little small, your all-thread will probably form threads when you install it. I scored an old VAR WAG-1 dishing tool for cheap (below).

I recently inherited a wheel my step-dad made. He used his own dishing tool (of the blocks of wood variety), and centered the wheel in a frame. It was spot-on center, true, and had all the spokes with nearly identical tension. You've kind of got the Ford F-150 of truing stands (the Rolls Royce is the DT Swiss model but it costs 2 grand). Your model will give you excellent results for a long time.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...a1e4902a1a.gif

The dish gauge is definitely a nice to have rather than a need to have tool. Depending on your truing stand for perfect, or even adequate, dishing is something I don't do.

What's the P&K Lie stand then, a Koenigsegg? :lol: