George wrote:

I've been tasked to make wheels for a Cinderella-type pumpkin coach which
is to receive gift cards at my daughter's wedding (no 3520 in my near
future!). I had the idea to turn a piece round, then, using the index,
rest and boring guide, bore through-and-through, assuring alignment of the
spokes for rim
and hub. Didn't work well at all, as the bit followed the grain,
resulting in a visible misalignment.

Anyone out there build spoked wheels short of the way they used to, by
boring the felloes and hub on the press, then gluing up? I'm under sixty
days to the wedding, so I do have some experiment time before I have to
settle for solid. If only the bills could all be paid within the same
time frame....

I just finished a spinning wheel for my daughter (we do the oddest things
for our kids!). You might want to use the technique I used on it. Make
the rim of the wheel from four segments, (you could use six or eight, I
would recommend 8). Cut the miters on the corners and dry fit the blank
for the wheel. With the blank firmly clamped, tack a piece from one outside
corner to the other, with shims in the other two corners, and flip the
piece over. Take one of the cutoffs from the miter cuts and place it dead
center on the piece you tacked across. The, using a tramel on your router,
rout out the inside radius of the wheel. Draw a tangent the outside
radius, which you have not cut yet, and divide it into four pieces(you will
have three marks on the line). Ignore the center line, the other two
indicate the location of your spoke holes. Continue the line around to the
freshly routed inside and center. Align the table of your drill press with
the angle on the rim piece and drill with a fostner bit.

On the hub. IF you have an indexing lathe, turn the piece for the hub and
build a jig to fit over the hub, with a hole drilled for your marking awl,
which you will then center over the hub piece while it is mounted in the
lathe. Set your index and punch a mark with an awl, rotate 90 degrees and
make you second mark and continue for the other two. After you have all
four marked. Move the jig and the indexing pin, find center between two of
your marks and mark it. The replace the jig and center the awl over the
freshly marked point. Index and mark the four holes at the 45 degree
points. Then remove from lathe and drill with a fostner bit.

It is easier than it sounds. One thing to watch out for is that you get
your wheel blank absolutely flat when you are gluing it up. Apply pressure
from all four sides (naturally) but also clamp the pieces to a perfectly
flat surface also. (I will do this next time :-))

Deb