News from the Wheel Workshop.

The spinning wheel is progressing well: I finished the bending part of the process this weekend.
Here's a pic of the bending in preparation: in front of me you see the steam box for the wood (not yet filled - it's preheating) and in the foreground the jig for bending my wheel rim around. It might have been even better to cut the jig with a slightly smaller radius than required for the final wheel, because bent wood will spring back a certain degree, but it's working like that as well.


So today I can start putting the wheel together. That means glueing the rim in one part, sawing the spokes to final length and then fitting the rim around the spokes. And then the "only" bit of work left is to put the wheel onto the stand, align the spindle and spindle holders and put them in as well. But first the wheel.

This, by the way, was the contraption steaming the second half of the long strip to be bent:



And now I'm off to the workshop again!