Originally Posted by
Nyah
For Sweeks and anyone else who uses a dishing stick/tool to make up for the inaccuracies of this stand, I'm curious: Are you able to effectively use the dishing stick without removing the wheel from the stand? If not, I can still see the value in it, but, that sure would be handy.
...FWIW, I have an older version of that stand. It works fine for me, and I've probably built out 40-50 wheels on it, new, and used it to true and even the tensions on dozens more. I try to run the tensions and even them out a little on any used wheels I am thinking of re-using. Most of them need it.
The dishing tool I use has a little tubular thing that drops over the axle end as the centering point for it, so it requires that I remove the wheel from the stand, and remove the QR. I only need to do it a couple of times, because I can see from the distance it is high on one side about how many spoke turns, and on which side, will be required to center the rim. You figure it out after a few wheels, so it's not burdensome.
What I find very useful from that style of lightweight, portable folding stand, is both the storage of it when not in use (hangs from two longer pegs on the pegboard in the tools cabinet), and the ease with which it can be moved around in use. So for certain operations, I am standing over it, while it sits on the floor. For other operations, I turn it around completely on the table, like when I want to stress relieve the spokes at the end of the process.
I have used a couple of Park Pro stands over at the co-op, and I can turn out as good a wheel on this as I can on those. IN addition, I use a tension meter, an old alloy crank arm as a lever for stress relieving, and usually a spoke wrench that grabs better without slipping, the ineffable "Spokey".