Photos Of The Front Wheel With All Spokes In Place
For a while the two front wheels had been missing two ‘special’ spokes. These missing special spokes have palm ends with two rivets where the spoke is joined to the rim, all the other spokes have no palm end and just a single rivet.
The delay in making these two special spokes was having the ability to easily cut the palm-end inside radii on the milling machine. With two spokes bolted together the steel thickness is 1/2″. (12 mm).
I had made the first pair of special spokes by rough profiling these radii using the chain drilling method. I then tried to cut the internal radii using a small boring head that I had purchased. This boring head was not robust enough and the HSS cutting tool broke. I finished off the radii using hand files.
To make the two new spokes I decided to make a special heavy-duty universal milling head adapter for the milling machine. It would be able to hold any of the chucks that can fit on my Sieg C4 lathe headstock spindle (the milling head adapter would have a replica of the lathe spindle nose) and would also be able to carry the Sieg C4 lathe topside adopted into a really sturdy milling head.
It took me a week to make this milling head adapter but when complete it did a splendid job of cutting the radii in the palm-ends of the front wheel spokes very quickly and neatly using a 20 mm diameter carbide insert endmill as a flycutter held in the Sieg C4 four-jaw chuck.
The design and manufacture of this milling head adapter will be uploaded in due course and I’ll also show how I used it to cut the spoke radii.
So the missing spokes were finished and here are the photos of the fully-spoked front wheel for the 6 inch Little Samson Traction Engine model:-
Font Wheel Fully Spoked
Photos of a half-sized Little Samson Traction Engine front wheel with all spokes in place.
Note that the front wheel photos above show, for the first time, the hub covers. These make the wheel look much more beefy.
Finishing-Off The Front Wheel
So what else is needed to finish off this front wheel? Not much really, only:-
Axle Bearings
- Design, manufacture, press into hub.
- Bore Hubs to suit (may need to use the lathe faceplate and make holding pieces).
Finish Hub Spokes and Cover Fixings
Final bolt-up of hub spokes and hub covers using some kind of Loctite-type adhesive.
Dummy Riveting of Tyres.
Cut Tyres Diagonally.
Hub Covers
- Round off edges
- Turn recess on both sides for Axle, Axle Collar and Hub Cap.
Oilers
- Make Oilers 5/8″ x 32 TPI.
- Drill and tap hub for oiler and screw in oiler.
Change Bolts for Rivets
- Test the riveting process, which will need:-
- Rivet Sets
- Rivet Dolly
- Big Hammer
- Ear Defenders!
- Rivet Cutter (Cut to length)
- Hydraulic Press – Experiment
Finishing and Painting
- Fill in incorrectly drilled holes in wheel flange.
- Fill in and smooth down flange welds and any other imperfections.
- Primer and top-coat with intermediate coats stopped and smoothed down.
- Add Lining.
And After This Wheel Is Complete?
All that remains is to finish spoking-up the other front wheel and finish as above.
And then make the back wheels!