Spoke Insertion Tools and other small bits
I made one of these when I was first playing with my lathe, gave it to John Speare, and forgot about it. He told me last week that he uses it with every wheel that he builds, and asked if I'd be interested in making 12 more of them for Pedals 2 People's wheelbuilding class. It is just a dull needle with a rough spiral on it that a nipple can sit in. You place the nipple into the tool, use the tool to push it into the rim, then remove the tool. It makes life easier on rims with deep cross sections where the nipple can get lost between both walls.
I've never really made a "run" of anything on my manual lathe before, so it was fun to think through the process to make a bunch of similar objects. Once I got the system down these took about 3 minutes each. Some are short because the needle bent or broke during manufacturing, so I just shortened the body and made a new needle. Those ones probably took 5 minutes. Figuring out how to do it in an efficient manner took me about an hour. So two hours of work, but next time it will be one.
Andre Ball built up a Schwinn Traveler with a Nexus 8sp hub. The chainstay cable housing stop on that bike is very close to the dropout and that short cable run made it difficult to remove the rear wheel. This is an under the bottom bracket cable housing stop and cable guide. It replaces the plastic cable guide that you'll find on most bikes.
Being able to fabricate small bits like this can be very useful.