I have made a truing stand and dishing tool and have been happy truing my wheels to a reasonable state but i think it would be much easier if i had some calipers to help identify the warped areas. Anyone have any plans/ideas/advice on the best way to make/bodge a set?

Can you use a stripped down road brake calliper. Possibly cut off the rubber part of the brake pads and sharpen the exposed ends to give you some pointed rim edge ‘scrapers’?

Or something along those lines.

Depending on your home made jig, can you cut a slot into some callipers and mount them square t the rim?

Warped areas of what? the rim?

do you mean a dial gauge? they’re cheap on fleabay

TBH if you just have a heavy thing with a plastic 6″ rule attached, you can manoeuvre it into place and find the bumps easy enough.

length of coathanger wire with a stubby pencil sellotaped to it. bend/move the wire until the tip of the pencil lead is just off the rim edge and you can easily see high and low points.

Magnetic dial gauge, £20 on eBay..

I dont mean a dial guage, something that can close in on the side of the rim from both sides so i can see which way it is out of lateral trueness. I made the roger musson stand and the accompanying tools but i think it will be easier with the caliper type guage where i can slowly close in on both sides of the rim to get better lateral trueness. I hope that makes sense?

You mean a dishing gauge?

No i have a dishing guage. Its the set of calipers that you get on decent truing stands which are at the front which aid the checking of lateral trueness, you slowly close them in to fine tune the straightening process. Currently i use a pointer on one side of the rim which is ok but i would like something that is fixed to the stand and allows for greater accuracy and ease of showing which side of the rim needs adjusting.

I use a ruler with a couple of bulldog clips. You can slide them in as the rim is trued laterally and check both sides of the rim.

and ease of showing which side of the rim needs adjusting.

This suggests a rather fundamental misunderstanding of what you’re actually doing. You can’t adjust one side of the rim (well, not without a big hammer)

Yes I know- I meant you can check lateral true from both sides which makes truing a lot easier ime

Get a set of woodturning calipers and mount them on a block or something.

eBay calipers