Building a Wooden Cart Wheel — Hub, Spokes, and Felloes

The spoked wheel is one of the greatest inventions in human history. First appearing around 2000 BCE, it made overland transport practical and remained essentially unchanged for nearly four thousand years. A wooden cart wheel is a precision assembly of three distinct components: a central hub (the nave) bored to fit the axle, a set of spokes radiating outward from the hub, and a rim (the felloe) made from curved segments joined end to end. Each component demands a different woodworking skill.

The hub is turned or carved from a single block of dense hardwood — elm is traditional because its interlocked grain resists splitting when mortised for the spokes. The spokes are riven from straight-grained oak for maximum strength. The felloes are sawn or carved from naturally curved timber — the crook of a branch that matches the wheel's curvature. Every joint must be tight: the spokes are driven into mortises in the hub and through mortises in the felloes, then wedged.

Wheelwrighting was one of the most skilled of the traditional trades. The wheel must be perfectly round, perfectly flat, and slightly dished (the spokes angled outward from the hub so the wheel tracks straight under load). A badly made wheel wobbles, wears unevenly, and collapses under the first heavy load.