Wooden spoke wheels

[Habusailor]

What is a good process for preserving those old wooden wheels


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[tmodelman]

Best protection is to seal the wood from weather and wet.


If rot and decay has not already set in, and each spoke is tight in the hub and the metal or wood felloe, then chemical strip off old paint, or use scrapers, plate glass shards work wonders for scraping.


Clean off to bare wood, sand with fine grit if needed. Dry well, then brush on coat of 1/2 thinner, and 1/2 spar varnish if you wish the wood look. Then apply more coats, decreasing the thinner, with light sanding between, tac rag off dust, and coat up to 4 or so coats, final being 100% top quality marine spar varnish.


If paint finish desired, prime with top coat compatible primer, sand, then lay on top coats, two double wet coats of enamel works great, best to have some axle device set up to turn the wood wheel by its hub to coat both sides of the wood spokes.

[redmodelt]

If the wood is dried and cracked and tenons are loose, best bet is new spokes. Your life and passengers could depend on them being in good shape.

[J Franklin]

Even if painted I like to use diluted linseed oil or such on the dry wood and especially the ends and around the hub. And I dry for a good while and then paint with a good standard type enamel like rustoleum. The old original types of enamels seem to hold their grip and are less prone to chipping.

[J Franklin]

Originally Posted by tmodelman

Best protection is to seal the wood from weather and wet.

I like your setup and agree with the above. But how do you paint the wheels and have no paint getting on the spoke ends?

[tmodelman]

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I've only painted assembled wood spoke wheels. So only the prepared outer surfaces get primed/painted/or varnished. Those
'spoke ends' assume to be the wood under the hub and hub plate, and the tenons which on metal felloe only stick up a bit.

The wood under the hub and plate is covered from weather, especially when you paint the entire assembly just like Ford.

Ford used a spin method, with the wheel revolving and the paint tank going up and down to cover the entire assembled wheel. Only part not painted by Ford was the bearing centers, those were plugged.


When I paint, the paint goes over the tenons too inside the outer felloe. If varnished, I brush varnish too over those exposed tenons inside the felloe. The hub area has varnish down to the hub and hub plates soaking in some too, but then a coat of paint goes over the hub and plate with tape edges on the wood spoke, so a rather good seal is made at that interface intentionally.


If you are assembling new spokes to the hubs and felloe, be cautious of pre-finishing those new spokes, as the finish may produce too much interference in pressing the spokes into place. Ford fitted the bare wood, and assembled the wheel, then painted. Any wood under the hub and plate was un-finished anyway.


My experience with boiled linseed oil on wood spokes wheels for a primer gave poor results to my finished enamel, the finish coat poorly dried in places and fell off in others. Others may use it, but didn't do for me. So I only use a quality primer now. I use quality automotive acrylic enamel with gloss additive hardener, and get tough finish with long lasting results.

[J Franklin]

This was the image I didn't understand, all is black except the spoke ends. I was wondering how that is done?

[dumb person]

The best i can think of would be soaking in a vacuum chamber for a week and pouring in that deep penetrating wood resin (Everdure?) letting is soak a few minutes & then add atmospheric pressure and allow to nearly set before removing them & cleaning off excess resin.

If you live in reality however... I've heard soaking the wood in a bath of linseed oil for a month or 2 does wonders. So i've been told, it swells the wood. I've not done this personally though.

If you have any doubts about the wood, either replace it first or use the marine wood chemical resin, Everdure & its thinner, applied several times with a brush. Then soak in linseed oil.

Originally Posted by J Franklin

This was the image I didn't understand, all is black except the spoke ends. I was wondering how that is done?

Maybe they painted the rims first. Looks like the wood is ports to pour wood preservative now or they'd soak in microbes.

[tmodelman]

J.


OK, understand your question, the pic was stage one of single coat, final coat filled the felloe and painted over those exposed tenons. Here is other pic of the painting process, just don't have any photos of finish wheel as this set up and wheels belong to another.


The second photo is mine, wheel felloe painted and covering the exposed tenon.