Well, I did get an opportunity to visit with the owner on this mud wagon in the last week, week
and a half or so, and he's got some decisions to make, and talk with the family about which
direction they want to go. So in the meantime, as I introduced last week, we're going to tackle these
two 10 foot tall wheels. Now I do have the rack moved, and this time I have it kind of straddled
around my table saw, in this direction, because I'm kind of anticipating that I'll probably
build that wheel in this area here. So this wheel now is free from being under this rack. So now I
can move it a little more freely and get some good measurements on it. Now this wheel has been worked
on a number of times before. The most obvious place where it has been welded is right here,
and it's kind of a cobble job. It actually looks like there is about
an inch and a half piece that was added in to this tire to make it a little wider.
So I'm going to probably dress that off eventually. It's got kind of a stair step in it. Kind of an
unsightly thing. I don't know how I can deal with that, but just to run my traveler around this wheel.
That shouldn't be too impactive on getting the diameter that I need. Well the hubs on these wheels
are a little unique. There's actually two sets of spokes that come out from that hub, and they come
to the tire in kind of a triangle position, similar to a bicycle style wheel with wire spokes. Well on
one side there's 12 spokes, the other side there's 12 spokes, so we have 24 spokes in all. But these
old pictures show that they have sawn sections, one section for every two spokes, so I made a
pattern for these felloe sections for this 10 foot wheel. It seems to fit the inside arch fairly well,
until we get to where this weld is. When we get to the weld, we can see the irregularity in the tire.
So there again, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to straighten that out or not, but as
a general rule, my pattern seems to fit the arcs of this tire pretty well. There are some slight
variations. You can see we kind of pull away here a little bit, but not too unexpected on this big
of a tire. And right here is where there was a forge weld, probably when this tire was originally made,
and we have a little hump there, which is kind of common to have a little knot
where the forged weld is. And then we kind of go into a flat spot right after that weld.
And then immediately run right in to another forge weld right here,
which seems to pull away from my pattern pretty drastically, almost a half of an inch.
But again, a pretty heavy knot where this was welded, again, sometime in it's history.
So short of those three spaces,
it kind of fits pretty close
clear around the tire.
There's another irregularity there, kind of a flat spot.
So the deal with these irregularities, it's going to present a challenge when we put this in a fire
to expand it, to shrink it onto the wheel.
I can make the wheel round, but this tire isn't round, but this tire isn't round
for a couple different spots, four I think, total.
So, we're gonna have to address that challenge
when we get into tire setting time. But right now, I just wanted to get a circumference, and
find out what my true diameter is, which will eliminate all these irregularities in this tire.
So every one revolution is two feet. I'm just going to count my revolutions.
13, 14, 15.
So 15 revolutions, plus 18 and a half inches.
So 15 revolutions, two feet per revolution, so I have 30 feet,
18, so I have another foot, plus six and a half inches, so my total circumference
is 31 feet, six and a half inches.
So if we have 31 feet in circumference, times 12, put this all into an inch configuration, plus
our another six and a half inches, we have 378 and a half inches in
circumference. So we're going to divide that by pi, 3.14, I have 120.5 inches in diameter.
120 is 10 feet. 120 and a half inches, so if we did divide that out by 12, we have 10 point
045, 10.05 inches, in diameter. So it's just a strong 10 feet, but that's the ID diameter.
So, I'm going to add another inch and a half, to allow for three quarters of an inch iron on both sides,
so we're going to be 10 feet, one and a half inches in OD diameter.
But the 10 feet ID is what I'll actually figure my wood diameters, so that'll give me my spoke lengths
that I need. Now, one thing I'll need to check is the second tire as well.
I went and measured the second tire and it's 15 revolutions, plus 17 inches.
So it's an inch and a half shorter
So we have 31 feet, five inches, as opposed to 31 feet six and a half inches, which I see is a good
thing, with this first tire that looks like it's had about an inch and a half piece added into it.
This will allow me to actually cut this gobbledy-gook out of here,
and bring this down and try to make the two tires the same, and simultaneously allow me to clean up this mess.
So if I use the second tire for the measurement of my wood, I'll actually be building,
on the wood, a 10 foot wheel. By the time the tire is on, it'll be 10 feet, one and a half.
So the shoulders on the hub that the spokes are going to butt up against is nine and a half inches.
120 inch wheel, take away that nine and a half, we have a hundred and ten and a
half inches. And divide that in half for our two separate spokes, our spokes are going to
be 55 and a quarter inches long.
So for my felloe sections they are inefficient as opposed to having
steam bent, but four inches thick, six inches wide, there's no way these are going to be steam bent.
So sawing them, out I'd like to find out just how wide a board I need
to stack these, or do I have to saw these out individually.
So if I kind of just run a quick test, give me enough room here for my band saw to work through,
it looks like if I had a board that was 11 inches wide, I could stack two of these.
Otherwise, I need a board that is about six and a half inches wide to get just one. If I can stack
them, that's more efficient, lumber-wise. Otherwise, I'll have to find lumber that is six and a half
inches deep. Now, a while back you remember they sent some material over to build these wheels,
and it was reclaimed, salvaged lumber, and it was full of splits and cracks and twisted and it was
unusable. So they continue to pursue different avenues to try to find, not so much material
for the spokes, that was easy to come by, but material for these six inch wide felloe sections.
Well, they kept running into barriers to where it just wasn't happening. There were those that said
that they would attempt to kiln dry six inch thick material, but there was no guarantees, and
most likely it was going to end up with splits and cracks anyway. That is generally the nature of kiln
drying heavy lumber. Generally they don't go over four inches thick. So they ended up running into
a brick wall and not coming up with anything. One of their pictures that they sent me shows clearly
that their six inch wide fellies were two, three inch wide, laminated together, and they also have
cross bolts on each side of the spokes. Very common to wheels, and just like the borax wagon wheels
that I built, they were eight inches wide. So we laminated two, four inch, and bolted them together,
and that was correct historically on how those wagons were built. Well, this picture also indicates
that that's how some of these wheels were built. So, bottom line was, they decided that they would
go that direction, and I have enough material in three inch thick that I can provide all the
material necessary for these felloe sections. Next, I just need to go and find out if I have any 11
inch wide material to do these felloe sections. I have plenty for the spokes.
So I have a rack of material of three inch white ash
and they have agreed that that would be acceptable to them
and they'll be completely painted when they're done and so this is the direction that
they decided that we would go. The bottom rack is all 16 feet. The second rack I have mostly 14s.
I have a few 13s mixed in here. And then the third rack here is also 14 footers but a little narrower.
Well, the bottom rack in 16 foot. The widest I have is ten and a half inches out of all these.
So that's not going to work, but in this next rack up of 14 foot, I have two here that are wide enough.
This one is 12 inches and this one here is just shy of 11 and a half. This one here is a 13' 2".
This one here is 14. So I'm going to use these two to stack felloe sections, and get a number of those.
And then I'm going to just go through and pick out these that are closer to six and a half,
like this one here this is six and three quarters. That's going to be the next most efficient.
And down here, in this 16 foot section, there's one there that's six and a half,
so I'll try to pick out those are going to be the most efficient for my spokes and my fellys.
So my spokes need to be 55 and a quarter. I'll probably make them 55
and a half. Give me some room to square up those ends. If I take the circumference of
the tire, remember I was at 377 inches on one, 378 on the other. If I figure that 377,
and divide it out by 12 fellor sections, each fellow section needs to be about 31.5 inches.
So I'm going to cut out some of these blanks at about 32 inches, give me a little room for trimming.
So I want to do a quick double check make sure everything is okay,
before I cut out a whole bunch of them.
I have a little split here, but I'm going to be able to cut around that.
I think that's going to work well. This one here is just a strong 11".
So one section here, laminated together, will actually make one felloe section, finished.
So I'll finish cutting that board into different blanks.
Well, this is going to give me four, eight, nine. From here I'm going to
have to have smaller six and a half, to seven inch planks, and cut these out individually.
So there's nine felloe sections there. So this is enough for 12 felloe sections for one wheel.
Now, to sort through the rest of the pile, I may pull some lumber that's more ideal for spokes than it is for fellys.
Well, this timber here, it's ten and a quarter. It was too narrow for felly sections,
but my spokes are going to be three by three by 55 and a half, so this will actually work well
for spokes. Anything with multiples of three. Many of these aren't going to quite make it.
I have a lot of sevens to eight, eight and a half, but this one will work well for spokes.
So this 10" by 16' plank will make nine spokes, three times three.
Well, as so often times is the case, they have a live edge here that ruins this board for three.
I'll only get two out of this, so instead of nine, I'll get eight out of that board.
So if I have this figured right, this should be enough for one wheel.
That should give me 12 felloe sections, and I have three, six,
this one is 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24 spokes, which is required for one wheel.
So when I have a pile of lumber, like I do on the rack, that allows me to kind of sort through for
different widths, trying to be efficient it does help, as opposed to just buying a unit of lumber,
and you get what you get, which is what I have. But I have the opportunity to kind of pick through it.
So what I have right now is 225 and a half board feet
in this one wheel, out of the timbers that I pulled off of my rack.
So it ended up being that my 14 footers were the most efficient
when I was using them for spokes at the 55 and a half increment. I had the least amount of waste.
My wide 11 and 12 inch boards were more efficient for the fellys.
Well, I don't have any more 12 inch,
so I'm going to have to use some of these seven, seven and a halves, then I've get up into the eights,
eight and a half's, and my efficiency is actually going to go down a bit, because I can't stack the
fellys anymore. And the seven to eight is an inefficient number when I need three inch spokes,
so my waist is actually going to go up on the second wheel.
So if I had the same dimensions for
the second wheel, as I did on the first, my total usage would be up to about 450 board feet,
but when we initially started calculating all this, I figured out that I would be probably closer
to 500 board feet, because you always figure an overage, oftentimes it's that thirty percent number.
And we're going to be kind of in that area. We may be closer to 500 board feet total by the time we
get both wheels all cut out. Well, I'll do some milling through this week and try to get these
to where I can maybe glue some felloes together and plane down these spokes.
We need to finish up at 2 and 7/8 a piece.
Anyway, appreciate you following along. Thanks for watching.