a steering wheel restoration

well, it's not every day you get to fix a 50 year old steering wheel. particularly one that says when you look at it, 'bet you can't fix me' ... it actually was a quite a trick, and will pulled it off beautifully. i picked up the staining at the end and will is now applying about half a dozen coats of tru-oil gun finish, the same finish he uses on his banjos and it should be ready to ship monday. we won't get rich on this one, but it was a challenge and a worthy project for a cool old car ... i can't wait to see it in place. click the photos to enlarge them ...
this was the last shot before the stain.  the new wood was pretty obvious, so a a little stain was definitely in order.
this is what we started with ... it's from a restored 1961 lotus elite.  the owner asked if we could make 'a new one' and after a little study, i suggested we fix the original as i'm still not exactly sure how i would go about making a new one.
it is essentially two laminated five layer rings, (the middle one of ebony on the top) sandwiched over the aluminum spoked rim. above you can see the wheel was broken completely through and fixed before.  it also had some really nasty white filler of some kind and a piece of leather where the ebony is now, glued in with some kind of awful rubber cement.  we never found the splices of the ends of the ring laminations even though we looked pretty hard ... whoever made the original was good. it's a little like those miracle stairs in santa fe ...
will started by routing an angled flat spot not quite halfway through and fitting a curved, angled piece into that recess ... you try it ...
clamped up

 

here's will bending ebony with our 'hot pipe' set up.  this picture is from an old post on inlays for a round table, but he did the parts for the steering wheel when i wasn't in the shop.

and now for the top side ... since you can see the laminations in the original, we made a small two layer lammy and routed out the beach outside the ebony, which will soaked and bent with the hot pipe ... i didn't get a shot of that in action, and i know it was not all that successful materials usage wise, but hey, it's in there. it took about 7 pieces to get three usable ones .. ebony is tough stuff to bend once it's kiln dried, even if it's only 1/8th inch thick, or, particularly if it's only an 1/8th" thick .. breaks every time almost.
ok we're making progress ... this is after the wash coat of half and half clear and amber shellac
looks pretty good where we plugged in the new wood ..
back side before the shellac ... ok out there ... got one that needs fixing?  we got it under control now. steering wheel's are us  ...