Wheel cuttin’ fool
Here’s a little side project that was easy and fun. A friend had an old wooden chaise lounge for outdoors that needed a new wheel. Here’s the old one.
I was asked to just make the wheel and not do the spoke figure… just as well. It would have been relatively simple to do with a router jig, but I just made the wheel. So, here’s how you copy a wheel.
- First glue up some wood of the proper thickness. I used oak because we had some around.
- Rough out a circle about the right size. This step is optional. You could start with any shape.
- Drill your center hole.
- Get a board and sink a bolt into it the same size as the center hole somewhere in the board. The only requirement is that the edge of the board be inside the radius of the circle, and the board is long enough to overhang the edge of the bandsaw table. Lika dis:
Don’t forget to remove the indexing pin on the side of the bandsaw table.
- Place your original wheel on the bolt, put the whole thing on the bandsaw table, and slide it to the edge of the blade.
In this photo I’ve clamped on a little thin board along the edge of the bandsaw table. What this does is act like a fence. Once you get your wheel just touching the edge of the bandsaw blade, clamp that fence to your bolt board. Now you can slide the wheel on the jig right past the blade and the blade will just touch the wheel. Good deal, now you’re ready for the new wheel.
- Slide your jig back towards you, put your new wheel on the jig.
- Start up the saw, and slide your jig forward. The saw will start cutting a slot into your new wheel. Keep pushing forward until the center of the wheel is perpendicular to the blade. Like this:
- Now, clamp your jig to the bandsaw table in this position. That’s what the big orange clamp is doing. Now the wheel can’t slide forward or backward. However, it can rotate on the bolt in the jig. That’s what we want.
- Rotate that puppy.
- As you do, you’ll cut out a perfect circle.
In my case, I’d already cut the wheel by hand to close to the circle shape I needed. That’s why the cutoff is a thin band. However, this jig allowed me to get the radius exactly right.
To get the edges rounded over, I used a router. It’s easy.
- Put a bit of stick on sandpaper on your jig.
- Put your wheel back on the jig.
- Put a bearing-guided roundover bit on your router
- And rout along the circumference. Flip the wheel, do the other side… Voila! Easy! The sandpaper helps to keep the wheel from turning as you rout it.
And there you go, 2 wheels exactly the same diameter.
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