Well, as I've been pulling some of this three inch material for the spokes and felloes for this 10 foot wheel,
I began to realize that I probably am guilty of doing what I do so often,
and that is make an assumption that you understand what's going on.
Most of you probably do, but maybe there's a few of you that don't,
that when we're dealing with hardwood lumber, it is not the same as when you go
down to the lumber yard to find a two by six, or two by twelve, and everything is dimensional and
uniform in size. Hardwood is not that way. It is oftentimes more random than that, and much
more subject to the dimensions of the tree, the logs, and the sawyer that's actually running the
mill, doing the sawing. So there there is far less uniformity in hardwoods than there is in softwoods.
So, as I'm working through my stack of lumber here of this three inch, which in the hardwood language
would be called 12-quarter, that's why you see so many different varieties in widths. Generally lengths
will be a little more consistent. They could be eights, tens, 12, 14, 16s, but occasionally you're
going to find a 9, an 11, a 13, it's just how it comes out of the tree. But that's why I'm
sorting through for widths, because of the way the hardwood is sawn. There's also some different
terminology in lingo that is thrown around in the hardwood industry, versus your softwood industry.
You know, we're going to go to the lumber yard and find a two by four. Well we know they aren't
full two by four anymore. They're going to be dimensioned down to inch and a half by three and
a half, and up the ladder as you go in size. But they're uniformly made that way. In hardwoods it's
different. It's generally calculated by quarters; a three-quarter, a four-quarter, a five-quarter,
six-quarter, eight-quarter. ten-quarter. twelve-quarter. 16-quarter. So it's 12-quarter what we're working
with, which is roughly a three inch board. And since the Milling isn't uniformed like soft woods, it is
different nomenclatures that way as well. Generally it's going to be random widths, but there's also an
S2S, S3S, straight line rip, hit and miss, select and better, different types of grading systems.
Well, what I'm working with here is random widths, obviously, and it is in the hit and miss category.
When it's run through the plane at the mill, it's in its rough condition, and the hit and miss is,
they want some contact on both sides of the board, and it doesn't have to be smooth and all the saw
marks, or all those track marks, taken out. It's literally just hit and miss. So some of this lumber
that I'm dealing with, you can see the track marks of the saw, and the outside where the planer has
hit it. Well this is a hit and miss, hit and miss. It hit a portion of the board, but it missed some
of the board too. So that's what we have in this 12 -quarter, hit and miss. And that's also why we will
find some what they call a live edge, or a weenie edge. This is where the bark of the tree most
likely was, not a full square cornered edge. Again , the planer hit here, with all of this side is a
miss, out of the hit and miss. So if this was in the category of S2S, which stands for surface two sides,
then the planer would have hit both sides uniformly and it would be a full planed smooth
surface on both sides, S2S, surface two sides. Well as it comes out of the tree, that tree
is not always straight, obviously, so S2S will still allow for the random widths, and they'll
have variations depending on how that tree grew. So if you wanted a straight line rip, it would be,
one side would be straight lined, and the other side would be however the tree was naturally.
Well S3S would be surface two sides, straight line ripped, and then planed, so you have surface three
sides, S3S. And then you'll have your grading systems which would be first and second, select and better,
number two common,... And all that has to do with is a clarity of the grain, the amount of knots that are
present. If it's number two common, some of those knots could be loose and movable. First and seconds,
they're going to be a little tighter. Select and better is your little higher grade. So anyway,
the whole point of this is, maybe I assumed that you maybe are familiar with the hardwood lingo.
But it's kind of like myself out building my pole barn, and I can get it done, but
I don't know all the construction lingo of purlins, and joists, and rafters, and yada, yada,
but the hardwood stuff kind of comes a little more natural to me. So if I assumed that you knew this,
and probably most of you do. If you just go down to Lowe's, or Home Depot, or whatever your local
hardwood store is, chances are that hardwood is going to be dimensional lumber. They have gone
to the trouble of surfacing both sides, straight lining planing it, similar to the soft wood industry,
and that's why you pay the premium price when you go to Lowe's or Home Depot, or that type
of a store. Whereas, where I buy either from a wholesaler generally, sometimes directly from
the mill, I will designate I want S2S, I want hit and miss. The random width will just
come as however they are, but generally I would say I want 14s and longer, or twelves and longer,
don't give me any eights, don't give me any tens. So random width, random length, is a very
common term. Random width is a given, unless you're going to straight line rip one side.
You know, so that's just part of all this this pile of lumber here. it's 12-quarter, hit and miss,
and I designated 14s and longer. So in the case where I'm buying eight quarter, two inch, hit and miss,
it's going to come in and measure at an inch in 15/16, assuming that, finished, you're going to go down
to an inch and three quarters. So that allows you some room to do your planing on site, in your shop.
Well this 12-quarter, three inch, as I bought as hit and miss, will vary depending on which mill
it comes from. Sometimes some of this is a strong three inch. It might be three and a sixteenth. Some
will actually come in at three and an eighth. Some of it will come in at 2 and 15/16, and that's where
the bulk of this lumber is that I have, is hit and miss, at 2 and 15/16. Well I want to finish
these for the spokes and the fellies both at 2 and 7/8, so my margin of error is very close.
I can't take off a lot in my planing process to take the miss part of this lumber outl to where
it is surfaced, and still retain my two and seven eighths. So this becomes more of a factor where I
have these wide boards that I'm going to stack my felly sections out of. Well, these wide boards
have more of a tendency to have a curve, or a warp, to them, like you see this one here has.
This one here was not even hit and miss. This just came in rough. There's no planer marks
at all on this board, and so it has a wobble to it. So if I put on my pattern, and I saw this
actually between the two patterns, I can take and split this board and allow it to lay flatter into
smaller sections and get my planing done, and I'm going to end up with more lumber left than if
I tried to take this whole board and make the whole thing flat. I'm going to rip this in half,
along the outside curve of my felloe section, so that it lays flat, and then I can play it to my 2
and 7/8 and have more of a chance of coming to an S2S condition at my two and seven eighths.
So this is a good example how we can make a board actually flatter, before we do the planing.
You see how much movement is in this. Just relaxing this board to where it can sit flat, I'll
only have to plane this much material, instead of the whole board. And when I'm trying to
save as much material as possible, sometimes this little bit will just make the difference.
This is a good example of how these can be slightly out of plain, or flat, but yet show up.
I had this marked out all the way across with my pencil marks, and you can see the remaining
pencil mark right here. But the planer took all these pencil marks out, and this was just low
enough that it left the pencil mark. Touched here, touched here, touched here, but left this. So these
small little irregularities is what I'm trying to be careful about. so that everything is flat.
One, two, three, four, five, six. One. two. three. four. So there's 24 for one wheel. I've got four extra
for the second wheel. I need 20 more. Yeah, one, two, three, four, five, six. One. two. three. four.
There's twenty four. That'll make my 12 felloe sections. Two, four, six, eight.
That'll make four more. So I need 16 more for felloe sections.
so this should give me the rest of
my spokes for the second wheel, and this would be the rest of my felloe sections as well. So I ended
up using 462 board feet of lumber. A little shy of what I thought, maybe. I could have gone up to 500,
but I did have some more seven, seven and a half, so it was really pretty efficient. Next, I guess
I get to do some more planing, and some more band saw work, and ripping out a few more spokes.
This should make our spokes for two wheels. I've got nine across, and five deep, so there's 45,
6, 7 and 8. 48 for our total number of spokes for both wheels. And in my felloe sections, I'm six
across and eight deep, so there's 48. I takes two per section, so that will give us our 24
felloe sections for both wheels. Well, as I was doing the planing and sawing, I did have three
sections that ended up being non-usable. This one had a big crack. I'm going to reject that one.
This one had a knot hiding inside. It wasn't visible. I could see this irregular grain, but I didn't expect
quite such an open knot, so I kicked that one aside. And then this one had a split that was going to
run into the felloe section, right on the corner, and this would have broken out, so I did reject
this one as well. So bottom line is, that I had to go back to my pile and cut a few more blocks to
make up for these ones that I rejected. So my 462 board feet, I added another 13 board feet to that,
so I ended up, bottom line, coming up to 475 board feet to make all the spokes and felloes for these wheels
You know, that's generally why you figure 30% overage when you're calculating your materials
cost, because this stuff just happens. It's kind of the unknown, and it's the overages that you
just have to factor in. So past this, all the spokes need to have their corners rounded
off. I need to start laminating my two felloe sections together,
and this is the next step in assembling these 10 foot tall wheels.
Appreciate you following along. Thanks for watching.