brake compound to brake compound, dust to dust

Even back in the days when it was possible to service and repair a bicycle using the various nonspecific tools accrued by my dad over the years, the various spare nuts, bolts and washers found in the various-nuts-bolts-and-washers-tin and occasionally the odd packet of appropriately-sized bearings from the rubbish garage up the road I never had any reason to piss about with spoke nipples using a spoke key. I assume it's because the rims of the wheels on the bikes I had as a child and youth were all fairly weighty and strong and less upset by kerbs, bricks, tree roots, lumps of frozen mud and gravel helpfully dropped in the middle of the poorly-resurfaced road by considerate farmers, potholes and trees than modern rims which have sacrified weight for cobble-resistance. Now that I think about it I do recall trying to clamp an axle to a garage table with a vice once or twice and twisting the spokes with a pair of pliers to try and get them all tuned to the same note but it wasn't with the need or intention to straighten them out, brake-fitting and frame-clearance tolerances being much greater on what I rode back then. I'd never lost an individual spoke until a couple of months ago (though lost a few at once when a rear mech committed suicide) and just gave it to a shop to replace but have been trying to sort out minor Pringling and intermittent brake-rub myself since. The other day the occasional chain-sliding-on-spoke noise became almost constant at the same time as each revolution resulted in an audible swipe past the brake pad so I attempted to simultaneously re-centre and true the wheel to shift the whole rim evenly anti-mechwards. It seems to have worked and only took about twenty minutes, including taking this using only my little fingers to prevent depositing gunk all over my camera.