Wooden Wheel

 

I was finally able to buy turning tools from payment of the last commissioned work I completed. (all my tools are wood project funded by choice) I also wanted to continue to incorporate lathe work in my projects, as I have done some in the past with borrowed tools.


Having been intrigued for years by wheel-wright work and wooden wheels in general, I set out to make an all wood wheel. I want it as strong as possible, being a functional useful part of a tool, such as a wheel-barrow.




Being a total novice at wheel making, I am attempting to balance functionality with aesthetics. The first step was to design a wheel  template: I sat down with  a compass, dividers, ruler and sharpened pencil.

I chose an 8" radius, for a 16" wheel. An 8" radius ends up working nice for layout, since with 6 segments, or felloes, each will have a corresponding length of 8".

I had some chunks of Hickory left over from my dining room table to use for the hub, so that's where I started.

I made sure of sharpness before attempting to plane hickory

My sharpening set-up. A YouTube video by woodworker Paul Sellers turned me on to this. Works great, and simple to use.

Squaring Hickory hub sections.

Glue-ups complete, done for the night.

 Working down to the six sides with a draw knife and hatchet.

Axle hubs cleaned up and ready

Felloes made and sized to template. I had enough Red Oak cut-offs to make 12, in two different thicknesses, for two wheels.

Trimming Felloe ends

Quick jig made to facilitate drilling end grain of Felloe ends at 90 degrees.

A quick improvement to my old lathe was a live center which has a bearing instead of a non-rotating dead center. The dead center had a point that overheated easy, especially with heavier turnings.

Using a through hole in a scrap board and a Forstner bit to mark centers on dowel stock, which will be used for the wheel spokes.

 

After Hickory, Walnut was a pleasure to turn.

Spokes temporarily installed

Adding alignment pegs to one side of each Felloe, which will also lend some additional strength.

Glued and flattened wheel on a jig, which is really just a hole cut in a pine circle I had.

Wheel circumference cut, smoothed with a freshly sharpened spoke shave.

Noticed a splintered void that I cut into that needs repair

Wheel damaged section planed smooth, with a scrap piece grain-matched to wheel, and glued overnight. Found the actual piece that splintered out after I was done for the night. Oh well.

Squaring and chamfering felloe straps

Gluing and pegging straps

Tried and true Natural Oil Varnish finishes them off. In retrospect, I believe a pegged lap joint would be a better choice for the joint between the felloes, although I think the strapping will do a good job at keeping them together. We'll see.