Craft News
| Wheelrighting Training for Apprentices | Top |
The Rural Apprenticeship Scheme at Hereford College of Technology
Herefordshire College of Technology aims to provide affordable and accessible training courses especially designed for small rural businesses. All training is based on the skills and techniques that will improved productivity. The course content, which is constantly updated to reflect new techniques, is delivered under realistic working conditions. This ensures that the trainee can produce high quality products at a profitable rate.
This scheme is a modern version of “apprenticeship” for those who are recently employed and starting to learn their trade.
The Scheme is based on an agreed Training Action Plan between the employer, the apprentice and the Herefordshire College of Technology. It provides a balanced mixture of practical experience under the supervision of a skilled employer and intensive periods of residential training in Hereford. This ensures that the training programme is tailored to meet the needs of the apprentice and the employer. Away from the distractions of the workplace this intensive method of instruction provides the underpinning knowledge necessary for NVQ attainment when available, via Accredited Prior Learning, and also minimises disruption to the business.
WHO CAN APPLY?
The Scheme is primarily designed for trainees, aged normally between 16 and 25, employed in firms in a rural area of England with a population of less than 10,000. Applicants from other areas may be accepted if places are available.
Applicants for this training will normally have been employed for at least 6 months in order to ensure that basic skills have been acquired.
HOW IS THE TRAINING DELIVERED?
The training takes the form of 14 one week modules spread over a 3 year period and sessions are held in our Training Centre in Hereford. The training is delivered in small groups with a maximum of 6 trainees. The apprentices will be required to undertake set projects at their place of work during the first year and make their own piece of work during the course.
COURSE FEES
Assistance may be available for eligible firms where there is no other source of funding. Those attending from other areas will be charged at our normal unsubsidised rates. The Worshipful Company of Wheelwrights may be able to provide some assistance for those in financial need, with a demonstrable interest in wheelwrighting, to enable them to attend this course. For further information, please contact the Chairman of the Craft Committee via the Clerk's Office
SYLLABUS
Wood machining operations.
Use of the lathe.
Morticer.
Bandsaw.
Cross cut.
Planer, thicknesser.
Circular saw for sawing spoke sections.
Spindle Moulder.
Use of setting up.
Grinding cutters. Making box for small pieces.
Making wheelstocks.
Turning, proportions, styles, allowances for stock hoops.
Marking out and morticing. Use of whalebone gauge.
Discussion of spoke stagger and wheeldish.
Making and fitting spokes.
Machining operations, sawing blanks.
Use of spindle moulder.
Making tenons.
Hand making spokes from rectangular section blanks.
Finishing machined spokes.
Driving spokes.
Spoke tonguing.
Felloes.
Machining and marking out operations.
Sanding
Ringing the wheel.
Planing down felloes (facing up and backing down).
Turning tyre and stock bonds.
Measuring tyre and stock bonds.
Welding tyre.
Wheelbinding.
Setting and finishing.
Boxing out the stock.
Fitting out the box and truing the wheel.
Different types and styles of wheel.
Stocks, bullnose, coach pattern, Warner etc, discussing their particular difficulties.
Spokes and mortices, plug spokes, round faced and sharp faced.
Tyre, rubber and channels.
Buying timber and suitable types of timber.
Examining wheels for repair.
Trainees work on projects agreed between trainee, masterman and training adviser. At the end of the course apprentices will be put forward for awards from City & Guilds and NVQ assessment.
HOW TO ENROL
Contact the Herefordshire College of Technology at the address below for full details. The candidate’s suitability will be assessed on application. We also offer training in seven other disciplines.
The Rural Apprenticeship Office
Herefordshire College of Technology
Folly Lane
Hereford
HR1 1LS
Tel: 01432 365314
Fax: 01432 365363
| Wheelwrights and Wheelwrighting, a report by David Viner | Top |
This appears in the recently published report titled Crafts in the English Countryside:
Towards a Future edited by Professor EJT Collins.
This landmark publication examines the state of the traditional crafts and trades in the English countryside. The first major survey for nearly 80 years, the main report draws on the knowledge and expertise of many leading authorities on the traditional rural crafts. David Viner has written the section titled Wheelwrights and Wheelwrighting, which reviews the current state of the industry. The report can be accessed on the internet at the report’s website
| The Circle of Life, an article by Dorothy Hollamby | Top |
A recent article on wheelwrighting that was published in NFU magazine in August 2004.
The ancient craft of wheelwrighting is not only alive and well, but is thriving once again.
The advent of the combustion engine meant that after World War 1 the wheelwright seemed destined to become just another name on the endangered species list. However, with only a handful of traditional wheelwrights left in the country, the wheel has turned full circle and they are now in demand. The order books are full again.
Douglas Andrews took over an established wheelwrights business at Three Cups, East Sussex, in 1997, after he had served his nine-year apprenticeship there with David Bysouth. He now has as much work as he can comfortably handle.
With his assistant Daniel Lambert-Gorwyn, Douglas likes to select his own trees as much as possible. He then cuts them down and seasons the resulting wood on site at the yard. A wheelwright needs to have a feel for the different woods he uses and an intimate understanding of each of their peculiar characteristics.
The work is varied – anything from a kissing gate for a churchyard to the complete restoration of gypsy caravans. Bespoke work, such as the garden bench that can be wheeled around to follow the sun, is another side of the business and, of course, making wheels.
There are wheels everywhere. The yard is magical, heaped with wheels of all sizes and sorts.
Myriads of ancient, well-used hand tools are stored for use, and they have a dignified presence about them. These tools are probably similar to the ones that made the wheels found in Iron Age settlements of Britain. The main difference is that the rims of these ancient wheels were often made from a single piece of ash which was bent to form the complete rim.
Wheels made from solid circle of elm are even more primitive, although they were still used in the Yorkshire Dales and Wales until the early 1800s and called ‘Clog-wheels’.
The natural qualities of the different woods dictate where they will be used. The hub or centre of the wheel, the ‘nave’ is always elm. Elm wood has an even grain, giving it a uniform strength that does not split, even when the spokes are fitted into the mortices around the hub.
The spokes need to be strong and rugged so they are made from oak, which will take the knocks and jolts of a journey. The rim is constructed from individual pieces of curved ash, each known as a felloe. Ash is used because it is tough but has an inbuilt flexibility. These felloes are sawn to shape from a template and will form a perfect circle, each joined to its neighbour by a strong oak peg or dowel. Viewed edgeways on, however, the wheel is seen to be dished, just like a saucer.
This gives the wheel its lateral insurance, the extra strength needed against natural sideways movements and jolts. The spoke between the ground and the hub though, will always run completely vertically as it turns.
This is the basic wheel. The type and size depends on what it is for, perhaps a vintage car, an original hay-wain or a horse-drawn vehicle. But whatever sort of wheel, the ‘grand finale’ is putting on the iron rim.
The metal rim is forged slightly smaller than the circumference of the wooden rim. It is then heated to expand, placed over the wooden wheel and cooled to contract, thereby holding the wheel secure in a firm grip. Douglas makes it look deceptively simple, but this masks the skill required, of course.
When fitting the metal rim onto the wheel there is no modern technology involved – it is somehow exciting and mysterious all at once. The equipment is carefully laid out, each piece in its correct position. The fire is lit, the dogs are tied up and the metal rim placed into the flames.
Everyone now waits and watches. The heating can’t be hurried, but there is a palpable sense of expectancy in the air and once jackets are donned to protect against the intense heat, you know that the time is almost right.
The metal will be ready once it is a dull ‘cherry red’ colour and it is at this stage that it is all hands to the deck. The rim is taken from the fire and placed over the waiting wooden wheel. Smoke sizzles as it touches the wood. The metal is quickly hammered into place, a few slips of flames leap up and they are immediately doused with the waiting water – billows of steam erupt.
The hot metal hisses angrily and the helpers become engulfed in turns, emerging then disappearing into the mists. It is dramatic. Somehow these basic elements of fire, water and steam touch a deep primal recall button.
Water is constantly poured on from the human chain, reaching out to the water trough, and the wood creaks as the metal rim contracts and tightens. In these final moments of cooling, the last adjustments for perfection are done by hammering the rim to position it exactly.
Then as suddenly as the drama started it is over, it is calm, and, from an onlooker’s perspective, it feels like an anti-climax. The wheel is checked and rolled away, the fire doused and it is tea and biscuits for all. Normality is restored. Even Douglas, who has done this so often, says it is like going through a new birth.
The end result is a beautiful, properly crafted, wooden wheel, which is strong and durable – the antipathy of a modern throw-away plastic society.
Dorothy Hollamby
(This article appeared in NFU Countryside Magazine in August 2004 and is reprinted above by kind permission of Dorothy Hollamby)
| History of the Bysouth Family of Wheelwrights | Top |
My grandfather, John Head Bysouth was apprenticed to a wheelwright in Brigg Lincolnshire. In the 1890's he set up a workshop behind the White Hart in Church Street, Baldock, Hertfordshire. He then moved to bigger premises in an old maltings building (which still exists in 2002) on the corner of Park Street in the same town, and also opened a workshop in Braughing. Of his five sons, three became wheelwrights. The eldest, Fred helped to run the Braughing workshop and eventually took it over. This business ceased in the early 1950s.
The youngest, Bert, bought the Park Street business in 1936, moved it 100 yards up the road and employed some six to eight men for some years, reducing to one over time. Tom Brown who had started with my grandfather, John Head in 1929 remained with the business until it closed in 1977.
My father, Philip, who was between these two wheelwrighting sons, set up as a wheelwright and undertaker at Lakenheath in Suffolk in the mid 1920s, but was not successful and found work with MG, Fuller of St.Ives Huntingdonshire and Creaseys of Knebworth, car and lorry body builders. With others he developed a cart to use the new Dunlop land tyres, which they exhibited at Crystal Palace. In 1935 he bought a business which had been established in 1790 at Little Downham, near Ely, Cambridgeshire. This was a village business comprising a wheelwright, builder and undertaker, and employed 10-15 men. During the war it was a protected establishment, considered essential to the war effort which meant that no-one could be called up for military service, and special food rations were allowed for staff doing hard physical work.
Philip continued making carts, tractor trailers etc. until 1949, when the Ferguson system had put an end to horse-drawn farm vehicles, and ill health had forced him to sell up. I was employed in the Little Downham business until it closed, and after National Service became a Funeral Director until my ability as a wheelwright was sought again, and I established the business at Three Cups, Heathfield, Sussex in 1980. Two school leavers came to me as apprentices, Douglas Andrews and later, Daniel Lambert-Gorwyn, who obtained their City and Guilds Certificates through the training board supported by the Wheelwrights Company. Douglas Andrews has now taken the business over on my retirement, over a hundred years after my grandfather started in the trade.
Liveryman David Bysouth, 2004
| Apprentices | Top |
Congratulations to Brian Cleaton, Philip Gregson, Catherine Sullivan and David Taylor who completed their two-year apprenticeship this year and are now qualified wheelwrights. The Company is very grateful to Liveryman Robert Hurford for his commitment to training the apprentices, travelling to Hereford and being prepared to continue to pass on his skills to those in training. Also thanks to Liveryman John Wright for his organisational and liaison work which is so important in ensuring names continue to come forward for training and that the course is available for them to go on.
The Craft Committee arranged a visit to Hereford College to tour the facilities, talk to the apprentices to whom the Master presented certificates, inspect their excellent work and to meet with and be entertained for lunch by the principal. A most enjoyable day. Tankards were presented to the apprentices on the occasion of the College’s Awards day on October 22nd 2004.
| Guild of Model Wheelwrights | Top |
We have established a mutual association with the Guild of Model Wheelwrights. The Guild is a unique organisation in the United Kingdom devoted to the precision scale modelling of all horse drawn:
Agricultural machinery, carts and wagons
Light and heavy commercial vehicles
Passenger and road vehicles
Caravans
Their website also has interesting information on the history of the construction of wheels.