I got myself a cheap(ish) truing stand for building bicycle wheels. While the thing isn’t the highest of quality, it does substantially do the job. Out of the box however, it wasn’t particularly well calibrated. I tried fixing it with a square and a steel rule, but this proved to be difficult, needing at least three hands. Regrettably, I only have two.
Instead therefore I made this tool which holds a steel rule centrally between an axle.
The idea is that the end of the steel rule represents a point that is perfectly (or, perfectly enough) centred between the “dropouts” where the wheel hub sits. The jig can then be adjusted so that the fingers are equidistant from the sides of the steel rule. This is how bad it was initially.
