Wheel Building
Browse used wheel building tools for sale from riders across the UK. This section covers the kit for lacing, truing, dishing and tensioning a wheel: truing stands, dishing gauges, tension meters, spoke wrenches and nipple drivers, plus the spoke prep that goes with them. It suits home mechanics building their own wheels and anyone straightening the ones they already own.
What tools do I need to build a wheel?
Four things do most of the work. A truing stand holds the wheel and shows lateral and radial error against a fixed reference. A dishing gauge confirms the rim sits centred between the locknuts. A spoke wrench in the correct size turns nipples without rounding them. A nipple driver takes the tedium out of running 32 nipples down to the same starting thread. A tension meter such as the Park Tool TM-1 is the fifth, and the one that turns guesswork into a repeatable number.
Do I need a truing stand, or will the frame do?
Zip-tying a pointer to a chainstay will get a slightly buckled wheel round enough to ride home, and that is a fair way to handle a trailside emergency. Building from scratch is a different problem, because you are chasing lateral error, radial error, dish and tension at the same time, and a stand with two adjustable calipers lets you see three of the four without taking the wheel out. A Park Tool TS-2 or the lighter TS-8 covers everything from a 20-inch wheel to a 29er, and an old example works as well as a new one.
How do I know the spoke tension is right?
By measuring it. Rim makers publish a maximum spoke tension, commonly somewhere between 100 and 130kgf on a rear drive side, and a tension meter converts the deflection of a spoke into that figure through a table matched to the spoke's gauge and shape. Evenness matters as much as the absolute number: a wheel whose drive-side tensions vary by more than about 20% will drift out of true under load however straight it looks in the stand. Callipers from the measurement tools section earn their place here for checking spoke gauge and rim depth before ordering parts.
What should I check when buying used wheel building tools?
On a truing stand, check the calipers move without slop, the adjuster threads have not been cross-threaded, and the axle slots have not worn oval enough to let the wheel sit off-centre. Spoke wrenches are consumables — push one onto a nipple and see whether it rocks, because splayed jaws round every nipple they touch. A tension meter is only useful with the conversion table matched to it, so ask whether that is included, and treat a bent pointer or a sticky pivot as a reason to walk away. Dishing gauges are simple, but sight along the sliding rod and check the feet are not bent.
What is fair to pay?
Truing stands and dishing gauges are steel and aluminium tools that outlast their owners, and a used professional stand is usually better value than a new budget one that flexes as tension comes up. Tension meters are the exception, as they can drift, and one is only worth buying with its table and ideally a check against a wheel you know is good. Buy spoke wrenches new — they cost little, and a worn one is far more expensive than it looks.