Wagon Wheels

If you just look at a wagon wheel and don't think about it, you may not appreciate the skill it took to make a wheel that did its job. Wagon wheels were made by people called "wheel-wrights". It was not small task to make the various parts of the wheel, muchless put them together so they fit and worked "together" and not against each other. The parts of a wheel are: the outter wheel steel,(the part that actually touches the ground), the spoke holders, the spokes, and the hub. That may not sound so complicated....but read on. The steel had to be tempered steel so that it would withstand rocks, dirt, gravel, mud, sticks, uneven ground,etc. The spoke holders had to be made "on the curve" to match the roundness of the steel. Holes were drilled into the spoke holders to exactly match the size of the spokes. Spokes were fashioned to fit into the spoke holders on one end and into the hub on the other end. The hub had to be made in the round with holes drilled exactly the size of the spokes. A hole ran completely through the hub to fit to the wagon axel.

Once the wheel was put together, it was placed on a spinning device to see if it would spin "in the round", and not wobble back and forth. Any wheel that wobbled could not be used. It would breakdown under a load, high speed, are uneven ground.
The wheel had to spin in complete rotation and in perfect rhythm.