I notice that both of my wheels would wobble by about 1 mm. How bad is that? Also, how much and how long would it take a LBS to fix that?

About 1/2 mm is my tollerence level. A lot of folks think 1mm is good enough. Lateral truing to 1/2 mm is the easiest and quickest part of wheel truing, assuming the rim and spokes are in good shape. Radial truing, tensioning, and rim centering (dishing) are much more time consuming depending on the condition of the wheel.
Shouldn't take more than a few minutes for a decent wheel mechanic to laterally true a wheel from 1mm out to 1/2mm or closer.

Al

That's great. The wheels on my commuter wobble by about 1.5mm on the front and about .75 mm on the back. On my litespeed, it's slightly less than 1mm. On my girlfriend's specialized dolce elite with the stock wheels, the front wheel is, (yeah i measured it) less than .25mm, it's ridiculously true.

Search the forums -- particularly the Bicycle Mechanics forum -- for truing wheels. There are several ways to do it yourself, without buying a truing stand. All you need is some basic know-how and an inexpensive spoke wrench.

http://www.velomax.com/faqfull.php3#1

Velomax has a little blurb on this

Too late. Royally screwed it up trying to fix it myself. :-( I think before I started, it was off by less than 1 mm. Argh. Another expensive lesson learned.

What a bad day... got in trouble at work, got into my first bike crash, and now screwed up my front wheel. :-(

I really need to sleep and just pray tomorrow will be better....

How are you measuring wheel wobble to fractions of a millimeter?

A dial indicator werks great.

I usually true it to the point where I can't tell which side the rim is rubbing on... Sure I spend about an hour on each wheel, but with sufficiently high spoke tension, I almost never have to do it again (unless I crash or something).

when the wheel starts to go 'dic-dic-dic-dic' real fast... I just come up with some clever song to sing along with the ryhthm until I have time to get it trued. If it starts to go 'unnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggghhhhhhh-ungggggh' for prolonged periods of time, and my pedalling starts to slow, I find the LBS ASAP

I really should use a dial indicator but I just use a pair of calipers, it's good down to 0.025mm.

A feeler gauge also works, I use to set my own rocker arm/valve stem gaps. After you've measured several gaps your eyeball gets calibrated pretty well.

All