homemade wooden steering wheel

I now this is got to be a dead horse but,
I can't find any thing on that how to home made wooden steering wheel.
if someone can help !!
Fred B.

Try a search here Fred. Someone posted here about doing this a couple years ago.

I eyes are blood shot, I'vebeen surffing so much LOL!!
Fred

I just looked and couldn't find it. A couple years ago someone rebuilt a wheel using wood....the wheel wasn't scratch built. Hopefully someone will come up with a link!

At the time there was a lot of interest in it, and there was discussion of using various years of wheels, etc.

I did find a link to this site:

http://www.secondchancegarage.com/public/93.cfm

but I think someone did something like this and posted on this site.

I have been an that site. It's nice but if you look closerhe dose not use bent wood.
The guy on here used a MGB steering wheel and bent wood.
Fred B.

I know who you are talking about as someone on ebay was selling 2-3 of his wheels recently. They are very nice and I came close to buying one of his. I'll see if I can find some infor here on him.

I have a Les Leston wheel that is made from bent wood. I have looked at it and wondered how they did it, as it has not rivets holding it to the aluminum center. Just a thought, but it looks like it was made from laminating thin strips of wood cut in the diameter of the wheel, and then built up under and around the aluminum center, and once completed, sanded to finished size.

Wooden steering wheels have been banned in SCCA dfor decades (unless they were allowed sometime after 1976

they are dangerous in a collision. splinters in the face and hands.

This was the link -> http://members.cox.net/mgbgt/woodwheeltwo.htm

but it's dead.

the guy soaked the wood and bent it around a form and then glued to the frame of the wheel.

There is a ton of info on the web about building a steam box and there is an Italian company that makes crazy bent wood in amazing shapes.

http://www.bendywood.com/

I'm going to give it a try... these are the steps I'm going to follow: it's prob a waste of time.

- hardwood, 2 half rounds molding, 5 feet or so
- route a channel to hold the frame of the wheel
- build a simple steam box using pvc, steam for ~ 1 hour
- build a form to bend the wood
- glue


I think that might work. Then again...

It was a nice page, too bad it is a dead link now.

mac townsend Wrote:

Hi,

The guys name is Bill Merideth. He had a GT and lives in Tusla, OK. Search the board here and see if he gives the instructions. he had the instructions with pictures on his website. I think the dead link above was his. I think he sold his GT. Here is his email address: blmerideth (at) cox.net. I'll look around because I think he sent me the instructions when i was think of making my 1963 Banjo wheel of wood. I kept it as original and refinished it.

Cheers,

You could always save your pennies for one of these :-)

http://www.lempertgroup.com/index.html

I would think you'd have to use at least 4 layers of wood to bend the radius of a steering wheel without cracking it - no matter how long you steam it. I've watched guys who make custom wooden handrails and its a LOT trickier than it looks. The forms need to be quite strong too, as the wood likes to bounce back toward straight as it dries! As a side note, the wood Motolita I once had appeared to be cut round from laminated hardwoods, not bent.

This site also gives some idea how they are made professionally: http://www.pbase.com/mdlempert/craft . I think this is part of the site listed above.

I have pics of the process, I thought it was really cool and I have some 5 hole wheels I want to do. Unfortunately, I don't have the description he gave on how he did it. It wasn't that hard but some tips could make it a little easier.

A "How to" guide on this site:

http://www.secondchancegarage.com/public/93.cfm

Never done it so I have no idea if this will work or not.

Pete.

There was someone here, maybe the fellow mentioned above, that took an old B wheel, removed everything down to the wire rim, then cut wood blocks and groved one side, kinda like a "c", glued them to the wheel, filled the grove in the back, then reshaped them to his taste with finger grooves. The result looked good although I am not a fan of wood wheels. The way he did it, it would not be as prone to splitting and impaling someone in an accident because the longest piece of wood was only an inch or so. Looked like a simple and fun project.

I wonder....can you use on of the archiving programs like goback, to find what the website used to be years ago?

If you have a copy of the web address, try this site, Gerry: http://www.archive.org/web/web.php Its the Internet Archive, and there is a high percentage of what has ever been on the internet in its archives. If you have a link to the site you are looking for (out of your bookmarks or old bookmarks you have stored on a floppy disk or CD) you may very well find their copy of it.

the old site I remember was from back in 1999, or even earlier. He had cut strips of no-so-hardwood into 1/8" strips, steamed, wrapped around a form and let sit for a while.

He used big plastic pipe and a tea pot to steam the wood.

Epoxied the first layer to the guts of a stock wheel, then glued up the rest. Routed and sanded the snot out of it, then used a drum sander on a drill to make the finger grooves. It looked great.

I want to say he used mahogany, but that was long time ago. I remember thinking whatever wood he used would get shewed up pretty badly with a wedding ring.

I think he used spar varnish, and I didn't like that idea either, again the whole wedding ring issue. I would have gone the tung oil route.

The problem with this URL's process [http://www.pbase.com/mdlempert/craft]


is that the rim of this wheel is parallel to the wheel while the rim on a MGB (at least mine) is perpendicular. Therefore with the MGB wheel you can attach your wood to the outside & inside of the wheel v's the front and back of the wheel.

see >> http://www.pbase.com/mdlempert/image/65756369

v's

http://bp0.blogger.com/_6RUdkCEwsLg/RhGAUN5l01I/AAAAAAAAAUE/zXJ8Pkj_9Ug/s1600-h/DSCF0604.JPG


Regarding bending wood. As long as you use hard wood, I don't think you will have much problems with it splitting. I grew up surround by the Amish and they putt around all day long on Hickory Wagon Wheels without much problems... or course it has a metal band around them.


Just check out that bendywood site for what you can accomplish with wood. What's amazing is that you can purchase a blank, work it then bend at will.