Shimano freehub service tool
20 April 2020DIY shimano hollowtech crank holder
21 April 2020
DIY universal spoke holder pliers
In the beggining of this year (2020) as I was searching on internet for some new tools I found an amazing tool made from Roval ( specializedbikes company for making wheels for specialized bikes). This is a plier to hold and prevent the aero spokes from twisting while truing a wheel.
Unfortunatelly I could not find this tool in Europe. I found it in US (for about 160$ but it did not worth the purchace considering shipping cost, duties and extra 24% VAT for Greece. So I was looking If I can modify any other plier and make a similar tool which will work with all aero spokes.
I found some different type of pliers that I could modify but they did not look very handy and easy to use.
A tool that looks similar to roval tool is an automatic wire stripping tool. Although the appearance of this is similar it does a completely different work. It's used to strip some mm of the plastic protective hose of the wire in order to connect it with an other wire, socket etc... The wire stripper which I bought costed 16€.
The construction of this tool is complex. It consists of two arms and each one has a jaw. As you press the plier the left jaw closes first to clamp and lock the wire.
Then the jaw of the right arm closes to cut the plastic protective hose and lastly the two arms open to seperate the wire from the plastic hose. The right jaw cutter has grooves of various sizes to fit wires of different sizes.
To conevrt the wire stipper to a spoke holder I had to do the following changes.
1) The two clamps of the left arm was frazed so that they are completely parallel.
2) The two cutters of the right arm was replaced with two jaw clamps identical to left arm (this was the most difficult task to do).
3) The two arms of the plier was bonded permanetely and do not move.
The clamps of the two arms do not close simultaneously. First closes the left clamp and then the right clamp. Ιn spite of that the clamp is very strong and it works better than I thought.
All the frazing work was done by a professional lathe machinist.
