Ten spokes and a broken rim

Hooray, I’ve finished ten of them. In the photo they don’t look all that alike, but the euro coin hopefully shows how small they are. In real life it’s a bit of a spot-the-difference. Jaques thought it was a big euro; I had that one specially made for this.

Then the spokes into the wheel. It’s starting to look like something now. But the next challenge is getting the thing off the wood again. Hopefully a little water still does the trick. And there’s still a rim to go on, which I have yet to make.

JDS73 had a good tip: he once freed a wrongly glued bulkhead by passing a heat gun on its lowest setting briefly over the glue line and cutting the softened glue loose with a hobby knife, heating and cutting in turns. Anyone who doesn’t dare can use a hairdryer, or keep wetting the wood regularly. Unfortunately I had already taken the wheel off, and in doing so the rim broke in three places. I hadn’t glued it together yet, so there was no strength in it either. In hindsight I should have glued it up completely first and then released it using JDS73’s tip. Luckily I still have one to go, so next time I’ll simply do it that way. Pingu57 advised sticking the next rim down at just a few small points, and Stephan suggested fixing it with D2 glue, so you can steam it off or just wet it.

Off the faceplate it looks like this. That whitish bloom is still some sawdust, which I’ll clean off. I had actually already done that, but I don’t think I quite know how to handle epoxy yet. You learn by doing. Now let it dry first.

Piet gently pointed out to Pingu57 and Jaques that a rudder hangs behind the sternpost, and that what I had made is called a ship’s wheel. Not an unimportant difference, after all.