The Begining of Wheel Makin'

Last night, Tom Erik Hedy and I began to tackle the monotonous task of making 40'' wheels out of irrigation pipe. 48 holes per flange, 2 flanges per hub, 96 holes per rim. So the grand total is 576 holes that need to be measured, scribed and drilled..... fun times.
By the end of the night we had all the rims drilled. As for the hubs, 2 are completed and one is measured and scribed and will wait until next time we are in the shop to be finished.

Things we learned:

• Very slight printer variance can throw off circumferential patterns enough to cause a headache. I made the templates to scale and (I thought) printed them to scale. However, Hedy and I's versions were about a 1/32 off which is enough to throw off a hole or two over a 42'' circumference. One method We ended up using 40 holes from the template then eyeballing the 8 additional holes so everything was equal. Another method we found worked was setting the arc length on a pair of calipers, scribing a hole, re-measuring using that hole as a reference, scribing, repeat until we got to about 38 ~ 40 holes then eyeballed the other 8.
  




• Beer can tabs should be turned to the side if used as ashtrays so people dont mistakenly sip from them.
  


• Psytrance is perfect for listening to while doing repetitive tasks such as slaving away with a center punch and drill.

Next visits agenda is:

1. cutting the wire for the spokes
   
2. welding the eye-bolts shut


3. position the thimbles in the eye-bolts


4. crimping ferrels


5. measuring & marking spokes to length


6. threading spokes in the hub


7. crimping the cable stops in place

The goal is to get these wheels done asap since they take the most of our resources to complete. Once these are out of the way, The Sand Reckoner will begin to take its shape!