Wheelwright Videos

I’ll be teaching a weelbarrow-making class with Peter Ross the blacksmith next month (there’s still a couple spots left) and we’ll be making the wheels too.  I know little about making wheels, but luckily Peter knows quite a bit, having worked at Colonial Williamsburg for over 20 years.  Roy Underhill once said that a wheel is simply a ladder wrapped into a circle. Well, I’ve made a ladder…. 

I’ve been hunting for old wheelwright videos, with limited success. This one, poetically narrated by a fellow who missed his calling as a Shakespearean actor,  depicts a English wheelwright’s shop in 1970:

Not exactly hand tool woodworking, the machines in this video are astounding.  Sovereign Hill is a 19th C. historic site in Australia and they have a working Industrial Revolution wheelwright’s shop set up.  Speedy.  Scary.: