Strakes

I found the strakes not particularly challenging, more a test of endurance. Once all 72 plus a few spares were drilled, I then chose to work on six at a time as this provided some small degree of variety. Just one brief word of warning, when the strakes are countersunk this also hands them, obvious maybe, but still worth a mention.

The first thing I did was to set up each strake on the mill and centre drill the four hole positions.

I did consider making a jig for this but decided against.

One wheels worth of strakes, now drilled.

The 36 divisions around each wheel were marked out by first calculating the circumference, then dividing by 36.

A pair of dividers were then set and walked around the rim, it took 3 or 4 adjustments of the dividers to get an acceptable result.

A single hole was then drilled through at each position, to allow each strake to be bolted in position.

The strake shown here has been countersunk and is now having a slight twist set in to it so that it will lay fairly flat against the wheel rim.

Once a few had been twisted it became quite easy to judge the amount of twist to apply.

The wheel on the right now with a full complement of stakes and the first six being applied to the other.

I set them side by side at this point to make sure that I ended up with a pair of wheels rather than two right or lefts.

You will note that each strake is held by one bolt and the strake nearest has a small G-clamp holding the second end. This allowed a second hole to be drilled and bolted for each strake in turn.

Each of the six strakes now with two bolts in and ready to start riveting.

A visit to a local bolt factors produced 100 3/16" UNF bolts & nuts.

I was very fortunate to be given this 90 year old surface table which has been an absolute godsend especially for building the wheels.

The length of 60mm square bare was bolted to the table and a rivet set was turned up from a piece of octagonal chisel steel. This was not hardened but left in its natural state.

Viewed from a different angle, despite being used to close well over 200 rivets very little wear has occurred to the unhardened set.

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