It's been an interesting couple of days. After soaking and disassembling the first wheel, I placed the bamboo used for the outter wheel into a retaining ring with a stainless steel slip shim to reshape it. After soaking, the bamboo had relaxed so much, it looked like a giant "U". I inserted a small flat metal piece at the splice to ease the ends of the splice a little flatter so that when I finished reassembling, they would be round and not come to a point like a teardrop.
I dry fit the hub and spokes into the bamboo ring, but soaking has swelled the oak enough so that the bamboo would not close completely around the spokes. The spokes were dried in an oven at 175F twice for an hour each about 8 hours apart, and they were left to cool in the closed oven so the wood didn't contract rapidly. After that, the dry fit was perfect.
I began gluing the pins back into the spokes to hold the bamboo ring onto them, starting with the two spokes opposite from the splice. An aluminum insert was made to hold the bamboo flat against the jig I made to receive the wheel. After the assembly was in place, I placed a flower pot ontop as a weight to hold the bamboo completely flat against the jig. After the first two pins were secured, I began to ease the bamboo into place over the remaining spokes, moving in pairs towards the splice, until I got to the splice itself.
Unfortunately, I discovered a split in the last spoke to be glued as I was ready to apply the glue. I was checking the dry fit of the peg when it opened up. The split was repaired and I moved on to the last pin and the biscuit splice. Below is the completely restored wheel. All missing splinters were filled with wood putty and sanded smooth. Now I can move on to the next three wheels. So I will be working on them and not posting for a while unless something unique shows up.
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