TOPIC:

Do yourself a big favor. Box up your hub and rim, and sent it off to Buchanan's. THERE IS NO ONE MORE QUALIFIED FOR THE JOB. I have used Buchanan's for over 40 years. You can spend hours trying to get your rim within maybe .040 thousands if you are lucky. Most of my spoked rims came back with maybe .010~.015 runout.

No, they are not cheap, but they are the BEST!!! PERIOD!!!! The BEST always cost money.

That's kind of what I'm leaning towards. I still have to purchase spokes and by the time I invest in a stand, spoke wrench and other things needed, I would have paid for the labor for Buchanan to lace and true the wheel.

I bought a stand like the one kzdcw has , and after I got it level and plumb it works great for balancing.
the 4 roller bearings are key to getting a good balance, not the 40 year old wheel bearings in the hub.

I have a set of Buchanan's for a 18" rear that I tried to do a few years back before getting the new stand and I chickened out because of a bad rim,
I would like to give it another shot with a better rim some day but I am a little apprehensive about it, you can't get it wrong.

The wheels should be able to take you straight down the road at 100+ mph, with no room for error.

Even if you send your rim out to have it done by a pro, having a well set up truing stand is a must if you change your own tires, IMO

Having nice tools is nice but not necessary. I have a wood setup similar to Kidkawie. I have built several sets of wheels and the set on my kz1000 has been to 120mph many times. Its possible to get very good results with the simplest setup. I took the first set of wheels I built to "The Wheelmaster" in Auburn, WA and had him check them out; he said they were good to go. There are loads of videos on how to do this yourself, dive in! I prefer to measure off the "bead area" on the inside of the rim rather than the outside like the manual shows.