The Allwood covered wagon kit I transformed into a 1:12 scale farm wagon has an ingenious method for constructing the wagon wheels. They supply dowels you cut into spokes and the shaped inner hubs.
The wheels are made from two layers of diecut plywood glued together and sanded.
The ingenious part comes in the form of the jig used to line up the spokes. It is made from two layers of plywood lined up in the middle and glued together.
The wheel assembly fits snugly onto the jig and the hub is placed in the middle. The jig has grooves in it serving as a guide for the spokes.
The instructions tell you to cut a whole bunch of dowel lengths to certain measurements, but I didn’t do it that way. Instead, I measured only the first one to the kit specified length and then measured the rest of the dowel lengths to fit. There was no way the standard measurements given with the kit instructions were going to work for all the spokes – some would be too long and others too short. That’s the nature of imprecise diecut parts.
Once the glue has dried, the wagon wheel pops off from the jig. :D
