MTFCA Forum

i am looking at some wheels that have have new spokes. the owner is cutting the car up and making a hot rod
sad but hey i need the wheels. anyway the owner before him did the spokes what should i look for to tell if they
are hickory. philip

If he will sell you the wood wheels you can always respoke them or have them done for you. If you can inform him that he could sell the body of that car and make money to buy a fiberglass hot rod body. Hope you can save the car as well as the wheels

i have spoke for the front and rear axle the engine and all 5 wheels. i need the wheels because mine are in poor condition.

You need to be sure the spokes are Hickory, not oak. They should be tight at the hub and felloe. And should be not more than 1/2 inch run out when spinning on axle. Will he sell the hubs with the wheels? If the hubs are in good condition and everything is tight, it would be better to keep them together.
Norm

yes i am getting both complete axles

Blankety Blank Hot Rodders. Taking a perfectly good-looking, and apparently running T to make a hot rod when there are parts piles out there that could be done easier and with less loss of history.
Would need a close up photo of the spokes to try to identify the wood. meantime, without knowing what wood they are, get a price as if the spokes were no good, because if they are oak, or some softwood, they are NO GOOD no matter how nice they look.

PS you ought to see if you could trade him a frame also and get the whole chassis intact. He's probably going to box the frame anyway (would be cheaper for him to buy a repro boxed frame already set up for a Hot Rod. )

I know that spokes were originally and should be made out of hickory as hickory will bend in stead of shatter like oak will.
I did not know that when I had my first set of wheels re-spoked. I had the wheels on my 1919 done is oak I've been driving on those wheels for 40 years now. Although I have seen all of RD's pictures of shattered oak spokes, and agree that hickory is the proper wood to use, I will continue to drive on the set of wheels I have.
: ^ )

The picture some time ago of shattered oak spokes is most unfair to oak spokes. The owner was towing his car and was turning too sharply on gravel and the wheels were jumping and skipping sideways he continued to turn until he was on asphalt and continued to tow forward with the wheels still skipping sideways on the pavement until they came apart. I doubt if Hickory could have taken the extreme abuse.
I have towed my T in tight turns and you need somebody in the car to assist, if alone you need to move a bit and turn until the turn is complete and then also assist in bringing it back to straight. It will track straight with slight variations but does not like hard turns. With the care and speed of these Ts I doubt that Oak will just shatter, there is no doubt that Hickory is the best but I don't think Oak is very far behind.

Some data about wood "strength" Hickory, Yellow Birch, Hard Maple, White Oak then Ash
Compressive strength tells you how much of a load a wood species can withstand parallel to the grain. How much weight will the legs of a table support before they buckle? It is measure by loading a block of wood parallel to the grain until it breaks.
Bending strength (also known as the modulus of rupture) shows the load the wood can withstand perpendicular to the grain. How much weight can you hang on a peg? It is measure by loading a block of wood perpendicular to the grain.
Stiffness or modulus of elasticity indicates how much the wood will deflect when a load is applied perpendicular to the grain. How far will those shelves sag? It is determined by applying a load to a beam of wood until it deflects a certain amount.
Hardness reveals how resistant the surface of the wood is to scratches, dents, and other abuse. It is determined by driving a metal ball halfway into the wood’s surface. The force used is recorded in pounds (lb); the higher the number, the stronger the wood.

Thank you for the wood table info / interesting.

From the table, Red oak and White oak have 71% and 75% the bending strength, respectively, of Hickory. Bending is the limiting strength in the kind of failure altair describes. Not a guarantee that Hickory would take that abuse but it would handle 25-29% more than Oak. jb

I feel Ralph Ricks, RDR - RIP, rolling over in his grave. After his incident he did a lot of research and testing of spokes. While the oak looks very nice he found they are inferior to Hickory for use in a Model T wheel.
The problem with running oak spokes on a parade car is that someday another driver may have different driving habits.