This is what we'll be starting with.  George sent this up and asked if we could duplicate it, just with the sizes and offsets that would work for us.  We think they are old Divco Milk Truck wheels.  When it comes to parts like this, we've always relied on Mike Fossbinder and his crew at Fossbinder Fabrications in Moline, Illinois.  He has the equipment and know how to make items like this happen.  We will be making these a two piece wheel, since the original was made this way.  This will allow us to get a perfect 90 degrees where the spokes meet the outer rim.  We are going to make 16's and 18's.  We first drew up the 16's, then upsized everything to do the 18's.  This way, everything grows in proportion (rather than just the spokes, etc).  This should make for some really nice looking wheels.

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We started on the centers first.  Here's the beginnings - we have 4 pieces that will eventually be the spoked centers.

First area to be machined is the bolt pattern and area for the centercap.  This will provide us an area to bolt down the piece when machining the spokes.

Now we need to make it round (along with having the proper "dish").  This lathe will do that in minutes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the program was written to do the spokes, Mike thought it would smart to test on a piece of wood.  This way, we can do some refinement if needed without costing us a piece of aluminum.

 

Here's the finished piece of wood.  We are now satisfied with the finished product and we can move on to the aluminum.

 

Because we wanted the wheels to look as close to the originals as possible, we went ahead and made our own hoops also.  This way backspacing issues were not a problem.  This machine turned to these blocks into rims in no time.