Has anyone here ever done it? Would you have any advice for someone thinking of doing it? Seems to me it might be fairly easy. I'm considering building most of the stand itself out of wood, and then attaching the necessary components to that.

Any thoughts?

Sounds like an inspiration for me to do my own. Just be careful of moisture and humidity effects on the geometry. If you use large panels or 2x4s warpage won't likely happen anyway.

here's a wooden one.

https://miketechinfo.com/new-tech-whe...truing%20stand

Do a google image search for "hommade truing stand"

This one looks sweet: https://fastermustache.org/gallery2/g.../TRUING+STAND/

EDIT: oops, I missed the wood part of the OP:
https://flickr.com/photos/folkdevil/561283466

Do you have plans/layout for the wood stand? Or close up photos? Looks like a nice design. Do you have any changes to make if you did it again?

Thanks!

+1 that stand is on my to do list for the weekend.

The bicycle itself can function as a truing stand, albeit a little cumbersome.

Roger Musson's e-book "Professional Guide to Wheelbuilding" www.wheelpro.co.uk has complete plans for building one out of MDF. Check it out. A wealth of good info in the book on the topic.

Is Musson's plan any better then the pictures posted here? https://miketechinfo.com/new-tech-whe...truing%20stand
I can't find a single picture or diagram of his stand anywhere.

The grey "An ingenious wheel truing stand" is Musson's. The link for his e-book is https://www.wheelpro.co.uk/wheelbuilding/book.php. I just looked it up after seeing it on Mike T.'s page. looks like a nice stand, and probably a useful e-book, but I haven't seen the actual e-book.

Keith

The photos in your link are of the truing stand described in Musson's book. He has complete building instructions in the book.

Yes.. I suppose I should read and not just look at pictures....

I just used an old mountain bike fork for assembling the wheels on my Arpan. Trueing the wheels to a reasonable extent is not hard. But I didn't have any way to accurately dish or center them one way or the other. And seems like the people that do this use dial indicators, which I don't have- doubt my rims were perfect enough for that to work well, anyway.

You don't need a dial indicator to center the rim. Just flip the wheel around.

Roger Musson has a great plan with all the details for the stand and gauges.
I think his gauges look better than the ones on my Park TS-2 for ease of siting, especially for radial truing.
Dimensions are all metric.

I made a very usable centering tool in about 10 minutes with a piece of 3/4" plywood about 6" x 27" and a carriage bolt. Cut a very flat V out of the plywood - leave an inch or so in the middle, and leave flat parts at the ends 3 " long or so - drill to suit the bolt at the apex of the V, and thread the bolt through the hole (hole should make the bolt fit tight). Voila, a centering tool, and you can adjust the bolt so that it touches the locknuts instead of the end of the axle if you don't have the axle exactly centered on the hub.

Sure, 2-3 times.

Easiest way out if you have a vise is to do some dumpster-diving, or to ask nicely at your local lbs until you get hold of some scrapped road steel forks. Spread one to take a rear wheel, keep one as-is. Stick them upside down in the vise and you have an instant trueing stand.
If you want some lateral indicators, run a long screw through each fork leg towards the rim.
For a radial indicator the easiest thing is to clamp a ruler or something across the fork legs and nudge it upwards until it touches the rim.

If you haven't got a vise you can cut the steerer tube down to a stub, and then insert the stub into a hole in a short piece of sturdy plank and you'll have a tabletop trueing stand.

Flipping the wheel over will let you center the wheel just as well as any dishing gauge.
Dial gauges to measure out of true are nice, but far from required. You'll hear/see where the rim touches well enough to do a decent job anyhow.

You can see the instructable I posted in my sig for a moderately-cheap-but-very-accurate option, albeit made of plastic and metal. At the very least it might give you some ideas on the shortcomings of cheaper models and ways to overcome them.

The big issues you will need to deal with if you make it out of wood is adjustability for different axle lengths, the ability to clamp the QR down firmly on wheels with QR because the bearings are not fully tightened until the QR is clamped, and an accurate roundness indicator that you can adjust for different rim widths.

Some of the versions posted above look like they would meet those criteria, others don't.

Also with wood you *could* face issues of warping over the years. Maybe insignificant, maybe not. If you are trying to get down to 5mm or 2mm max variation it could theoretically have some impact.

Hate to be the devils advocate, but you can get a Park TS-2 that will last forever for $175. Building any homemade version is going to have a material cost of $30-$50 plus labor. I really think the frustration of making and using a homemade model is not worth it in the long run. Plus, no need for a dish stick, just flip the wheel around. None of the homemade ones are much different than just using your brake pads as a guide, nor do they work that well if you're doing different size wheels.

Hey, $125 is a lot of bones for many of us! Especially if you are only gonna true or build a couple sets of wheels a year.

And building your own just-as-good on-the-cheap gives you a smarmy better-than-everybody-else feeling.

just use an old fork,I have a Park ,but either 1 works

How do you deal with roundness accurately with just an old fork? Not sarcasm, honest question.

From my personal experience, now that I know what I'm doing I could use an old fork successfully, but when I was a rank beginner I think I would have had a lot more difficulty learning what the hell I was doing than I did by having a decent stand that gave me feedback on all the parameters.

Park TS-7 runs about the same as the modded Performance model, no mods needed, made of steel, manufactured by a reputable company. Order it up, open box, true wheels.

im planning on using the back triangles of an old women's schwinn as a truing stand, chop off the front parts of the bike, throw a radial truing guide on the seat tube, and lateral truing guides on the triangle arms. we'll see how it turns out once i get around to it.

a piece of tape across the fork & keep adjusting till I get the roundness ,I did this for awhile before I got a good deal on the Park