Wheel Jig – Part 2

Today I made some improvements to the wheel rim jig, I marked out the outer rim using a transom arm protractor. That is, a protractor that is made by fixing a batten to the centre of the circle and then rotating the batten through 360 degrees marking a line at the end of the arm. This gives you a circle. Then I cut along the line with a jigsaw to leave me with a circle. I still need to rasp down some high spots and fill some low spots, but it gives me the shape that I need.

I drew a line through the centre of the circle to give me the starting point. This line passes through the centre point in the circle, the line gives me 0^o and 180^o. From there, I marked off points at 36^o, 72^o, 108^o, 144^o and back to 180^o. As the circle is divided by an even number, I can simply draw a line from each of these five points to the opposite side of the circle to give me 10 equal divisions.

Next, I marked out a point on each of the division lines about 1 and a half inches back (2.5cm) from the perimeter and drilled holes through for the jig clamps. Turn the jig over and clean up the slight tear-out from the drill and, presto, a wheel rim jig is made.

You should be able to draw a straight line between each opposing pair of jigs and they should all meet in the centre of the circle.

I may need to fix another layer of fence palings to the jig to make it thick enough. Otherwise there will be a tendency for the laths to warp because one side or the other of the clamp will be off-set.

 

The threaded bar that is used in the clamp has been left quite long so that I can have enough clamp to make a rim up to about 15cm.

In the top photograph, I have put the topmost clamp all the way through and brought the next two clamps all the way forward so that I can use the clamp as a hanger to hang the clamp off the ground. I have also got a hole drilled through that was at 45^o from the first hole. This will be where I can hang the jig up in my workshop. Hanging the jig means that I can have bench-space cleared up while I wait for the epoxy to cure. The epoxy that I will be using is a two-part marine epoxy. This epoxy has a little bit more flexibility in it than other woodworking epoxies and the wheels will take a bit of bumping around when under load.

One of the reasons that I have made this jig with 10 jig clamps is that I intend to make my wheels with 10 spokes. The clamps also provide me with a guide for making the spokes.

Anyway, that’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed it.

Making Cart Wheels

I need to make some cart wheels for my planned goat cart. Some time ago, I had some jig clamps made (to my design) by a local engineering company, they are simply a pair of round bar of equal size and diameter. The bottom piece is tapped so that a bolt can be passed through it, while the top piece has a hole for the bolt to pass through. When the bolts (2) are tightened, the two pieces are brought together.

The idea is that you have a timber form and you drill a hole through the form and pass the tapped clamp piece through the hole. The work piece that needs to be clamped is then put on the form and the top piece of the clamp is added with the bolts (I have fixed nyloc nuts to the ends of the threaded rod to make my bolts). I have 10 of these clamps.

On another project that I was working on, I made some crude timber wheels (using fence palings).

The wheel was only being used in a “proof-of-concept” so I never actually used the wheel. The next part is to mark up the wheel and put in the holes for the jig clamps. There are 10 clamps, so 10 holes around 360o means that they will be at 36^o from each other … well I can work with that. First, drill one hole and put the clamp in.

Here you can see what I mean, one part of the clamp is fixed in the jig, while the other is able to move in and out by turning the bolts top and bottom. The only real drawback with this design is that it is easy for the piece to skew, so I have to be careful when tightening the bolts.

So, to prove the concept for you, here is a piece of Huon pine that I cut from a larger piece, this is called a lath. I cut many of these laths to make laminated longbows from (another story for another time).

I’ve placed another jig clamp at 45^o (because it is easier to measure with what I had at hand. I will put the rest of the clamps at 36^o).

You can see how the clamps are pulling the Huon pine in to the shape of the former.

For this to work properly, I will need to steam the lath (and the lath will need to be much longer). I will be cutting many more laths on my table saw from Tasmanian Oak since that’s a fairly easily obtained timber in the widths and lengths that I need. I also need to refine the timber wheel that I am using as a form. It is not a perfect circle. For that I need to set up my router on a swing arm from the centre of the wheel. I’ll use a straight cut router bit so that the wheel is cut cleanly from the centre.

The lath will be set on the forming jig while pliant from steaming and then taken off the former. When the lath has cured, I will then use epoxy to glue it to another lath until I have a wheel rim that is approximately as high as it is wide.

In between laminations, I will leave the progressing wheel rim on the jig as the next lath will need to be formed to the wheel rim as it goes.

The above lath is about 3mm thick and 30mm wide, so I’d need about 10 laths to make a wheel. Also, each lath needs to be about 3mm longer than the previous one to account for the increase in thickness.

So, there you go. Apart from a bit of tidying up in the workshop that was my playing around in the workshop.

Tomorrow I have a Goat Judging course to attend, so I won’t be doing any more work on this project until Sunday.

Goat Wagon

Well, I want one … enough said? No not really, I guess. I have a wether and he is getting bigger all the time. I have read a bit about using goats as working animals on the farm and I think that it would be good fun for both me and the goats.

Goats are gregarious animals with so much personality and inquisitiveness. Like dogs, they are also very happy to please.

There are two paths you can follow … pack or draught.

Pack Goats

Goats, it seems, can carry about half their body weight on their back without too much trouble. The most common form of pack for a goat is a cross pack. This is, basically, two “X” frames that are joined in at the crossing by a beam. The packs hang from the two up-standing parts of the X and there is a belly strap that keeps the thing from slipping under the goats feet. Pack training a goat is all about getting the goat to be OK with the thing on it’s back to the point where the goat can all but forget it is there.

Training follows a fairly simple process of first training the goat to the lead, and then training the goat to the pack. Training for the pack (so I have read) is done by first attaching a belly strap, then adding a light weight onto the strap (such as a blanket) and then increasing the weight slowly over time. Goats are clever and will get the idea pretty quickly if they are given suitable rewards (food).

I have lots of firewood that I need to collect around my property, and it is too steep for my ride-on mower to get into the top paddock for this … so I will be training my wether for pack work. At the moment the wether, Darius, is six months old, so it’s about time for me to start.

Draught Goats

Goats also make great draught animals. A goat can pull roughly twice it’s weight when the thing it is pulling is properly balanced. I think that a four wheeled draught vehicle (wagon) would be far superior to a two wheeled vehicle (cart) because the goat does not have downward or upward pressure from the vehicle as well as drag weight. There may be other reasons that you would want a cart … but I can’t think of any good reasons.

My plan is to make a light-weight wagon using steel tubing from discarded bicycles and casting joints and other bits in aluminium.

Training a goat to pull a vehicle is more complex than pack training. You have to train the goat to the lead, train the goat to pull, train the goat for voice commands, etc. so it isn’t quite as easy. I think that I will train Darius for pack work first, and then when he is comfortable with that, I’ll train him for draught work.

Others doing similar stuff

There are a bunch of websites out there where people are already doing the things that I want to do here. Check out the North American Pack Goat Association (http://www.napga.org/) for info on pack goats; Harness Goat Society (http://www.harnessgoats.co.uk/) for info on draught goats and their attendant kit; you can also check into the Cart_Wagon_Goats Yahoo! email group (http://pets.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/Cart_Wagon_Goats/) for people who have some excellent discussions on this topic.

Goat News

Well, Holly and Millie are happy little does. I have been looking into training the goats so that they are easier to manage for the girls and also because I’m more than a little interested in the use of goats throughout history.

Goats were mankind’s first domesticated animal used for the provision of meat, fibre, milk, bone, sinew and also as a beast of burden. The role of goats as a cart animal only dwindled with the general availability of horses. Goats were used to pull ploughs, harrows, carts, buggies and any number of other draught implements of a weight up to 1.5 times the animal’s body weight. Additionally, goats were used as pack animals able to carry weights up to half their body weight (some sources indicate more). There are two great websites that I have found for people interested in these activities:

The UK Harness Goat Society (http://www.harnessgoats.co.uk/index.html) is a great website for information on goats as draught animals; and

The North American Pack Goat Association (http://www.napga.org/default.asp) is a great resource for information on goats as pack animals.

There are great photos on the site (under the members’ gallery) of goats on pack trails through some absolutely stunning American wilderness trails.

I have made myself a driving bridle for my goats and I am in the process of training my goats to wear it. Basically, this involves having the goats wear the bridle for brief periods while eating (and otherwise distracted) and giving them plenty of positive reinforcement.

I have ordered a ground driving rig (driving halter, long lines, and belly strap) so that I can train the goats with more tack and so that they get more experience with the sort of harness that they would wear for most types of ground driving equipment. More on that in future!

I am glad to say that the goats are now fully weaned. No more making up formula, yay! They are growing quickly and love long walks in the top paddock where they get to forage to their hearts content.