I guess I’ve never posted a project on LJ before but I haven’t got a current one that I’ve actually started cutting lumber for so I thought I’d show a past one. This is a steering wheel I made for the sailboat I built a few years ago.

Unfortunately I didn’t take pictures of everything but here’s what I’ve got.

I laid out the wheel on a piece of 3/4” MDF. Then I worked right on the layout for the construction. I made an adjustable trammel for my trim router. The pivot was a 1/2” bolt and bronze bushings. I used the large bolt because the hub has a 3/4” bore and later I would need to bolt the hub in place on the jig during assembly. It made sense to just drill the big hole from the git go.

There are little scraps of wood screwed down around the outside of the ring. These were used to locate the spokes. I bolted the hub to the surface, put in the spoke blanks making sure they were aligned properly. Then I screwed down the blocks to hold everything in place. Fromt here I was able to work out the lengths and miter angles for the inner felloes and mount them. Of course before routing the inner felloes, I removed the hub and spoke blanks.

This first image shows the inner felloes routed to shape. These are hard maple.

I had a friend turn the spokes since I haven’t got a lathe. I made blanks the same size as the spokes to stand in for fitting purposes.

In the next image you can see the outer felloes (black cherry) ready for routing. I glued them together with super glue as I was mounting them to the board. Once the assembly was cut to round it was removed and set asside until assembly. Notice that the joints are staggered 15° from the spokes so that they fall between the spokes. The piece of yellow poplar laying on the assembled ring was my “compass” I used one of those router centering pins for its pivot.

And routing the outer felloes. Of course there were two of these rings.

There is the wheel dry assembled with the dummy spoke blanks standing in for the real ones.

Somehow I missed some pictures between the last part and this next image. After I got the turned spokes from my friend, I laid them down on the jig with the hub. Then I routed the recess for the out felloes on the top side. I put in spacers under the inner felloes to bring them up to the correct height and then assembled the wheel. Then the wheel was flipped over, the recess for the other out felloes was routed and the felloes glued and screwed in place. I used epoxy to assmble the wheel as I never plan to disassemble this one.

Before I assembled the wheel, I finished the inner ends of the spokes since I wouldn’t be able to get at them afterwards.

The screw holes were bunged with maple plugs “glued” in with spar varnish.

Here’s a shot of some plugs. When I cut plgs for bunging holes, I don’t cut them free. I leve a very thin bit of wood to hold them together. This makes them easier to hand and getting their grain aligned is dead simple. If the grain isn’t aligned, there’ll be a gap between the plug and the wood it is in. Installing the bungs involves dipping the end one in varnish, positioning it over the hole and whacking it with a hammer to seat it. When you hit the plug it breaks free of the stick. You don’t get your hands messy and you can move along very rapidly.

I don’t glue bungs in. I prefer to use the same thing I’ll finish the piece with to gllue them in. This way there’s no worry about a glue line that won’t take finish. The varnish holds the bungs just fine andfor things that may need to be disassembled, bungs installed this way are much easier to remove. You just jack them out with a woodscrew. This the traditonal way of installing bungs for boat builders

Some folks like to cut plugs flush with a chisel but I prefer to use a flush trim saw. Less chance of a problem due to descending grain.

Here’s a picture of three of the spokes my friend made for me. They are laminated of maple and cherry.

And the final thing.

Thanks for looking.

And for what it’s worth, the center of the three pictures at the top is not of me oranyone I know. I sold the boat about a month and a half after making the wheel. I wish I had it back sometimes.