Restoring Wagon Wheel

I have always wanted a wagon wheel to display in my front yard. But they always cost more than I could afford topay. So when I found one in pieces for only $10 I grabbed it. I always saw them priced at something like $150 or more.

I had heard a lot of conversation indicating that making a wagon wheel was a big deal and required a lot of skill.  It is not a big deal, and it doesn’t really require a large amount of skill. If I could do it, you can do it too.

The finished wheel is 44” tall. Here is a picture of the hub, which I managed to patch up and save, and the only intact spoke.

Having these 2 pieces saved me a lot of work. All I had to do was figure out and make the fellows and turn the spokes.  The fellows are the curved outer segments which the tire rests on.

Here is a picture of the pile of parts I bought.

To determine the exact sizes of all the parts, I would need a full sized layout.

Since all the spokes and fellows are identical to each other, I only need to layout for one.  I did check one fellowe against the layout for safety.

Now it was time to make the spokes. They have a round tenon on the fellowe end and a rectangular tenon on the hub end.

I knew that I wanted an antique look on the finished wheel, and the new wood wasn’t going to have that look.  So I burned the surfaces with a torch to get a really rough look. I wire brushed most of the charred wood off.  Now it was time to put the wheel together.

All the parts fit, and now it was time to close it up.

I used a band clamp to pull everything together, and then tried to install the steel ring, or tire as it is correctly called.

I have to work alone, and I live in the city, so I can’t very well build a fire big enough to heat and install the tire. I decided to cut the tire with a torch and then pull it back together and weld it.

I temporarily welded on a couple of pieces of angle iron and used all-thread to close the gap. I had to add a couple of heavy duty C-clamps to accomplish this.

Fortunately, everything went as planned and everything fit.

Now it was time to get rid of the freshly made look and make this wheel look old. I used straight laundry bleach in a spray bottle, and repeated bleaching the wood several times.

This is how it looks now sitting in my front yard.  No one even suspects that it has been repaired, and I get a lot of nice comments on it.

April, 2006