How To Make Your Own Wood Steering Wheel - Page 4

Now For The Artistic Part

Removing the clamps, we now observed our handiwork; three assemblies that resemble wood steering wheels. It was time for delicate hand work and patience...

What we now had were three wood-rimmed steering wheels that needed detailed hand-finishing, so from this point we got out the 100-grit sandpaper, a curved wood rasp, several files of varying shape and a cup of coffee (for moral support). Obviously, the wood on each wheel was rough-sawn and rough-routed, so the surface had to be smoothed down to furniture-level quality. Also, the transitions had to be shaped and detailed by hand (files, etc.) since the router couldn't easily get into their "typography".

The most important shaping exercise was the creation of "finger slots," those raised bumps on the back of the wheel where one's fingers can grip. In actuality, the bumps aren't raised. The finger areas are cut down slots, leaving the bumps. We placed our fingers around the wheels, marked the spaces in between, then carefully measured a reasonable spacing for the slots. We also decided upon the desired depth of the slots and drew a line to that depth around the outer and inner circumferences of the wheels.

With the slot locations and depth drawn out, we were ready to begin the tedious-but-exacting work of filing down the wood for each slot, one at a time (no, there is no other way to do this, at least nothing we could come up with).

The Falcon's wheel, shown with the file. One third of the slots are done at this point.

The sanding, shaping, slot-cutting and never-ending smoothing operations completed (about 3 hours per wheel), we finish-sanded the wood with 220-grit paper. Satisfying ourselves that the wheels were "perfect," we were ready for stain and varnish.

Finale

Since staining and varnishing are themselves tasks that are the subject of a future article, we will just outline the steps here:

Step 1 is to tack-rag the wood thoroughly to remove all traces of dust.
Step 2, stain the wheel the desired color and tone.
Step 3, apply at least 5 coats of clear, high-gloss polyurethane varnish, "sanding" with OOOO steel wool between coats.

The Falcon's wheel, shown with the file. One third of the slots are done at this point.

The Jag's wheel installed, looking gorgeous with its polished hub and leather-wrapped spokes.

The Falcon's steering wheel, showing nifty little polished metal fittings at the junction between the wood and plastic.

The Corvette's steering wheel, not completed due to indecision on our part about inlay wood, color, and arguments over whose car in which it might be installed.