Felloe Clamping Tool

Various tools can be used for cutting the mitres of felloes in order to produce a wooden ring that can be turned to make the rim of a wheel.

They should be doweled together for strength and they need to be made normally from five, six, seven or eight segments to accommodate twice the number of spokes.

Wheelwrights cut them by hand with a frame saw, and trimmed them with side-axe and adze, but for accuracy, the modelmaker needs to turn them on a lathe.

It is advisable to glue them to each other and then glue the ring to a faceplate. Screw clamps therefore make for much firmer joints and the screws in the illustration have the advantage that they turn to be at right-angles to the surface of the segment and different base boards can accommodate different numbers of clamps and sizes of rings.

Each clamp fits into a socket on the baseboard and has a tapped hole across the top to take the bolt. It is helpful to make small pads to spread the pressure from the end of the bolt.