Thread: Making Wooden Wagon Wheels

What do you want the charriot to do? If it is for reenactment and charging around a battle field then it is taking a real pounding and will need to be well made. The iron rim or tyre is what holds a wheel together and it is shrunk on to the wood wheel. Any spoked wood wheel without the iron rim will not have the strength regardless of biscuits or pocket hole screws. That is why the site you looked at says replica wheel.
I have seen some stuff on the net, perhaps Roy Underhill or someone showing how they are made. You would need some blacksmithing equipment and know how to do an authentic wheel. I would be looking at perhaps a trot racing buggy as the frame to build your chariot around.
Regards
John

Hi John,

Basically its very low impact, wheeling someone into a cabaret show with 2 "dancers" pulling it along. Basically as an entrance.

There's No charging around a battlefield or anything like that.

Originally Posted by jarred191

Hi All

I've been tasked with building a Chariot over the next couple of months, and thought i'd give making wooden wagon wheels a go.

Basically, from what I've been told so far, this Chariot will be holding one average man, and the weight of the chariot itself...so i'd be guessing around 140kg absolute max.

I've found a website with instructions on how to make these wheels (How to Make a Replica Wagon Wheel: 18 steps (with pictures) however it does very blatantly state that these are for display purposes only.

My question is, if built to spec from the website, and with added strength of using 2 biscuits in each of the rim joints, glue (such as titebond) and using square stock for the spokes and pocket screwing these into the rim and centre hub...would it be strong enough for this purpose?

My initial thinking is that it will be more than strong enough, however I've never built anything like these before, so really have no idea.

Any feedback is welcome.

I would suggest you make a template out of ply or mdf to the size & style you want, then route out of reasonable quality structural plywood (20mm thick) and laminate at least 3 together (total thickness 60mm) fit bearings to your hub, could even fix your wheel to a brake disc rotor and trailer axle, finish wheel with fibre glass and resin, paint to desired color scheme.
Just an idea maybe....

...maybe this calculator from Builders Construction Calculators - Contractors, Tradies and DIY may help.

Jarred,
the link for the "replica" wagon wheels is to make items for looks only. They might work and maybe you could make one and break it to see how strong it is but rwbuild's advice is good. For a play or something like that, strong ply would be the go.

This wooden penny farthing might give some ideas.

Note how when it was built the spokes have been splayed slightly in the hub, to give two rows of holes for the spokes to fit in (and sort of a very flat cone shape like proper bikes have).

The bloke who made this said he did ride it (once) and then put it up in the roof of his restaurant. I think it must have been a bit of a handful.

Regards
SWK

And now you give me the excuse to post some of these and you'll see what the difference between a real wheel and the "replica" is.


1 - Hub
2 - Shoulder/collar
3 - Axle bore
4 - Hub Bush
5 - Hub Ring
6 - Shoulder Ring
7 - Spoke
8 - Shield/Escutcheon
9 - Hub Peg
10 - Rim Peg
11 - Rim Crown
12 - Rim Segment
13 - Wheel Hoop

Regards
SWK

I would not trust the Replica design to be load bearing even to haul someone on stage, there are too many things wrong with it.

The hub should be made from a round blank with straight grain parallel to the axle shaft, not a block of dressed timber with the axle hole drilled accross the grain.

There should be two spokes connected to each fellow (wheel segment), staggered at the hub end so one comes from the outer side of the hub and the other comes from the inner side. This gives the wheel lateral stability and stops it collapsing in turns etc.

There are far to few (8) spokes in the wheel, typically a small light buggy wheel would have a minimum 12 spokes (6 segments) and heavier wheels for a dray etc could have 18 spokes (9 segments) or more. Chariots had four spokes in the very early times and were very unreliable according to histories that I have read, sometimes being deemed as more dangerous to the owners side in a battle than they were to the opposition. These wheels had tapered spokes with a broad cross section at the hub tapering to a narrow section at the wheel, but were still unreliable.

There's a great set of videos showing the manufacture of a wooden wheel which might give you an idea of the work required.


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCojJ-K3Ad0&feature=channel&list=UL]Hands Horse Drawn Carriage Makers Part 1 - YouTube[/ame]

Originally Posted by rwbuild

I would suggest you make a template out of ply or mdf to the size & style you want, then route out of reasonable quality structural plywood (20mm thick) and laminate at least 3 together (total thickness 60mm) fit bearings to your hub, could even fix your wheel to a brake disc rotor and trailer axle, finish wheel with fibre glass and resin, paint to desired color scheme.
Just an idea maybe....

That's the way I'd be going, if its only for a stage show. Laminated ply would be strong enough, with the rim and spokes all in one piece... IMHO! I have built something similar, and the body was part of a car (heavier than your setup). We wheeled someone down a street in Toowoomba, and later it became a fixed kids plaything.
Paint effects will give any shadows for roundness, depth and offsets.

Some serious wheels here: WWA Info Exchange :: View topic - Civil War limber chest

And Uncle Roy ... http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rc...VUt5QLxioyVllw

Possible interest: https://www.woodworkforums.com/f152/w...4/#post1483386

Cheers,
Paul

Several links show up on this video's youtube page

Hands Horse Drawn Carriage Makers Part 1 - YouTube