Well, east of Billings, about 40 miles, is a town called Hardin. In the town of Hardin
there is a museum that kind of commemorates the local history of that area. Well, in the
past I have participated in demonstrating on living history days at that museum.
We have had some pretty strong winds through the summer and I guess one went through the
Hardin area and took a wagon and tumbled it, and broke one of the wheels. Well one of these
wheels was brought over to get repaired and that's what I need to do this week.
Well, this is the rear wheel off of this wagon,
so therefore it has 14 spokes and seven sawn felloe sections. Well nine of these spokes are
not repairable, so I have to replace them. But five out of the seven felloe sections can be
salvaged. I'm only going to have to replace two, so the goal here is to preserve this wheel, make
it solid enough again for display purposes. But you know it could be sound enough to
be pulled for light duty, but we're going to preserve this wheel as much as we can.
So, with the wood repairs done, the last step is to set the tire and do the final touch-ups.
Well to set the tire I need to measure the OD of the wheel and the ID of the iron tire. So as
I go around, I have small little gaps between the felloe sections on this, so I take the traveler and
measure actually only the wood. Where there is the gap, I take the traveler and I move
it across that gap, so I have an accurate measurement of the actual physical wood.
So as I prepare to set this tire, I'm expecting it to give me a little more
difficulty because of all the spaces between the felloe sections. It's not
something uncommon, but this one takes a little more work to actually kind
of try to jack this tire down onto the wheel, before I put the water to it to shrink it down.
Well this metal filing and vinegar solution works really well for blending new wood in
with old spokes. Now these are the old felloe sections. This felloe section here is actually
Oak, so it turned a little blacker because of the tannic acid in Oak. This felloe section was Ash,
these spokes are hickory, but this solution of vinegar and metal filings actually blends them
in pretty well, so they don't stand out quite so much like a sore thumb. So this wheel is
ready to go back, to be put on this wagon as a static display as part of the Hardin Museum.
Once again, appreciate you following along. Thanks for watching!