Made this a couple of days ago, and used it for the first time today. Super-stoked on how well it worked.
I make segmented forks and the problem I was having is that however I try to fixture them up, when I tack them and then go to check them with a wheel they’re always slightly on the piss. So I have to cut the tacks, move them absolutely tiny amounts (like half the width of a tack), and test again. And again. That can be a real test of patience.
So I just wanted something that fit in the dropouts exactly (M8 threaded rod is a slightly loose fit and I think that’s where some of the problems come from) and then has a perfectly square and centred extension to go up to the middle of the fork, just like a wheel would basically, but less bulky and in the way.
I made the short end on my minilathe out of some stainless round bar. The centre piece is just some 3/4" 16-gauge tube I had lying around. I got it square by a process of tack-and-bash and checking in a known perfect fork.
This is how you use it. The left leg is already tacked. There’s a straight line drawn on the table, which I can easily see goes all the way down the steerer, the middle of the tool, and to the midpoint between the dropouts to see it’s all assembled correctly. Got a couple of tacks in, checked it with the wheel (both ways round of course) and it was absolutely bob-on first time.
