Steering Wheel

I've been making the steering wheel. This has fitted in well around the Christmas interruptions and my lathe, drill press and CNC mill are in a cooler workshop - it is very hot here at the moment!

I want a wheel with a ring and spokes with handles - see the mockup in the previous post. I had already made the hub and its aluminium bush. This is visible in the left hand photo below. There is a slot through one end of the bush with a pin through the axle to stop it turning. Also in this photo are the pieces of the ring temporarily assembled with their loose tenons. The six segments of the ring were cut out on my small CNC mill; they are oversize to provide for the eventual clean up. They had to be flat on the outside with square corner so they could be stood on edge in a jig while the slots for the loose tenons were milled. The right hand photo shows the sticky mess after gluing all the pieces together.

With the glue set I roughly cut the outside to shape and trimmed off the excess of the tenons. On the lathe the ring was held on the outside of the chuck jaws while the outside was carefully finished to size and one flat side faced off. Then a "jam chuck" was turned in a piece of scrap timber; this has a recess turned in the face which is a tight fit on the outside of the ring. With the ring hammered into the recess the inside and the other flat face can be turned to size. The LH photo below shows ring and hub  on the assembly board.

The RH photo below shows the setup for drilling the holes in the hub and ring. These holes have to be accurately drilled or the spokes simply will not fit. The phot shows the hub being drill. It is clamped to the jam chuck used on the lathe which now has a ring of holes in it exactly 60 degrees apart. The jam chuck can rotate on a bolt which holds it to a vertical board on the drill press table. The board also has the same 6 x 60 degree spaced holes. At the 6 o'clock position a drill is locking the rotating chuck to the fixed support while one hole is drilled. Then the chuck is turned by 60 degrees and the next hole drilled. The ring was drilled with it jammed into the chuck.

 The LH photo below shows the wheel assembled with pieces of dowel and no glue. It went togehter very easily - it is far easier to get those holes right than to position and size the photos on this page! I turned 6 handles with a hole the same size as the dowel and then glued the whole wheel together.

Now I am debating whether to stain it or leave it natural.