New Wagon Wheels We build our wood-hub wagon wheels for stagecoaches and farm wagons around extra sturdy hard-wood hubs, hand-turned to match any style wagon wheels. Our wood hubs with boxings set and four steel bands, are tightly fitted with authentic-style spokes and bent felloes for a top-of-the-line wheel. All of our wagon wheels are expertly crafted to hold up through the toughest of driving conditions and continue to give you years of worry-free service. Our new wood-hub wagon wheels come hand-sanded and ready to finish. Use these wagon wheels to replace a broken wheel or our decor wagon wheels for many country theme ideas. Tight Wheel Guarantee To insure that your wheels stay tight, we dry the wood wheel parts to suit the relative humidity of your area. This is another reason why our wheels come with a complete guarantee of your satisfaction. “Hansen Wheel Shop does an excellent job. I could not be more pleased. The run-out both ways does not exceed 1/8" on a 60" stagecoach wheel.” - Russ Tyndall, S & R Stageworks

"The Wheel Wright's Shop" circa 1825 “There was nothing for it but practice and experience of every difficulty. Reasoned science for us did not exist. What the wheelwright had to do was live up to the wisdom passed down, to follow the customs, and work to the measurements, which had been tested and corrected long before our time, in every village shop, all across the country. A wheelwright's brain had to fit itself to this by growing into it, just as his hands had to grow into the movements that would plane a felloe `true out `o wind'. So the work was more of an art - a very fascinating art - than a science. A good wheelwright knew by art, and not by reasoning; the proportion to keep between spokes and felloes; and so too a good smith knew how tight a two-and-a-half inch tyre should be for a five foot wheel. He felt it in his bones. It was a perception with him, but there was no science, no reasoning. Every detail stood by itself, and had to be learnt either by trial and error or by tradition.” George Sturt “Wheelwright's Shop”

The Art of the Wheel Wright
To build a good carriage or wagon it was first necessary to plan the job and make drawings and specifications. The best carriage draftsmen were also mechanics who had learned carriage making in the shop while taking a course, usually a correspondence course, in drafting. The National Association of American Carriage Makers had a good correspondence school for that purpose.

The process of building the carriage or wagon came next and was an art that required an expert wheelwright and blacksmith to build a balanced, durable wheel and to create the iron work, a good woodworker to construct the wood parts for the gears and bodies, and a painter to finish and decorate the final product.

The art of making and repairing wagon wheels was a very special trade. I had watched Mr. Dalton while I was an apprentice and without a doubt he was one of the finest wheelwrights in the business. The wheels that he made were almost indestructible. In the first operation of making a wheel the mortises in the hubs were made of an exact size and pitch to a pattern with the proper shape for draft. Then the spoke tenons were finished for a driving fit into the hubs with hand hammers weighing from three to 10 pounds, according to the size of the wheel. If the hub mortises and the spoke tenons were of the correct size and shape, five or six sharp blows with the hammer would set the spoke in place sufficiently tight to stay as if welded and not too tight to disturb the grain of the woods in the hubs and spokes. If the draft, or lateral pull on the spokes, was greater than necessary on the finished carriage the spokes would pull out of the hubs or the hubs would split. After all the spokes were driven into the hubs in correct alignment, the ends were cut off with a hollow auger, and the spoke spindles were cut to a shoulder making a perfect circle of the desired diameter. Next the rims, or felloes, were bored to fit the spokes. The holes in the felloes and the spoke spindles were matched to the proper diameter for strength.

After the rims were driven into place, and all the joints perfected, the wheel was ready for the blacksmith to roll the tire, weld the ends of the tire and make the inside circumference of the tire slightly smaller than the circumference of the wheel, the necessary measurements being taken with a circular tire gauge. For a wagon wheel four feet in diameter requiring a tire three inches wide and three fourths thick, the tire was made one half inch smaller in circumference than the wheel. The tire was then heated to a low cherry red in either a special furnace or by building a wood fire around it on the ground. The heat would expand the metal so that it would drop easily around the wheel where it would be cooled by a stream of water shrinking it around the rim. If the wheel had been made correctly and the tire had the proper draft, the completed wheel would have the correct dish and ring like a bell. The last operation in wheel making was called "boxing the hub" which involved setting a tapered bearing inside the hub that would ride the axle skein like a glove. This job had to be done with extreme care to insure the proper alignment and to set the box bearing in the hub tight enough to stay in place, and not too tight to injure the hub wood.

Making wagon wheels and repairing them was the most delicate part of the wagon trade. Each wheel had to be treated according to its size and condition and skill for this could only be acquired by experience and practice. A careless blacksmith could ruin the finest wheels by setting the tires on wood improperly or by giving the tires excessive draft, making them too tight. The wheel axles were obtained in halves from the factory with the spindles and boxes already finished. The blacksmith had to fit the axle stocks to the wood shapes, weld them in the center and line the spindles with the proper setting for the wheels. The set of the axle spindles had to be guided by the taper of the spindle and the height and dish of the wheels to make the wagon run with all the wheels balanced so that there would be no strain against either the axle shoulders or nut. A properly set axle would allow the wheel to float on the full length of the spindle.