Road Fan

I have a few bikes to refurbish for a friend and his wife (matching his/hers wedding gifts), and the 45+ year old steel chainrings are warped. New chainsets are not an option.

I need a Bicycle Research Chainring Straightener. Anybody have one or similar to sell? There was one on Ebay recently but I missed it.

EDIT: I've bought something that I think will do the trick - see below for the story.

reconnaissance

I use an adjustable wrench. Crescent wrench.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustable_spanner

oneclick 

Yes.

Old big ones are the best, they've got lots of surface area, they usually have tighter jaws, and the larger thumbscrew lets you get a good firm grip.

And steel ones are usually easy - most of the ones I've dealt with bent at mounting holes where the metal is smallest in cross-section; what you do is watch the chrome surface reflection in a good light and you can see when each arm is flat. If it's a separable ring you can also grip it from inside, and tweak each branch of the arm-at-the-hole.

ARider2

I have used the Park Tool rotor truing fork for straightening chainrings. It has a long slot that works well for most cases...

mountaindave 

+1 on both of the above ideas

rhm

I have that tool and am willing to lend it; send me a private message and we can work out the details.

juvela

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tip -

unless you can see visible runout right at the teeth it is best to make your adjustments down as low (close to the centre) as possible

some deformations are best resolved by cold setting the spider itself

the Bicycle Research tool is called the Lajeunesse for a mechanic at the shop whose name is Dan Lajeunesse and who created it

used to visit with him at the shop in Concord Califiornia back in the 1970's as we had purchased the same model of pickup truck and would exchange information on that

Dan is also a guitarist/guitar maker

Bicycle Research Products is a creation of Don Millberger, formerly an employee at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory

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Road Fan

@rhm, Always generous, thank you so much!

@juvela, your advice matches my intuition, to make the adjustments down low. I already took a shot at that with my 14" adjustable and it's really too big to get in and bend things under good control.

Bottom line to all, I found a few of the Park tool on 'Bay, so I bought one.

As well, Juvela the tale of the history of Bicycle Research is interesting. I worked with some Livermore folks for a few years. I also had a colleague at Ford who was a physicist working as a mechanical engineer, and for the price of a few Mexican lunches, he made me a headset cup press. I made up a set of dimensions for a Campy Strada headset and the head tube on my Masi, and he designed cups and turned them on his lathe. I've never had problems with headsets on steel frames since. He also made me a ram for cup extraction, but its pretty hard to get it in place, so I'm still down to a big punch and a 1 lb hammer. It works quite well!

Any case I'd say my chainring need is settled.