VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1929-1932 What wood for steering wheel?

Hi
My 1930 wooden steering wheel has almost passed the point of no return. An expert wheel wright says that it has been patched up too many times and I am getting him to make a new one.
The big question is what was the wood used?
I know the USA wheels were painted black, but this is an Argentinian assembled car and has no trace of black paint

peter, my '30 is typical; bare wood. black steering wheels started in '31. don't know what wood, though. pax, jim

My 35 Chevrolet roadster RHD assembled in Argentina Buenos Aries plant , used Brazilian walnut for many wood body parts.

I took one of the parts , after I sanded it , over to the lumber yard that carried exotic woods. The old guy on the counter put his nose to it and said " BRAZILIAN WALNUT " .

A very dark brown and when sanded with belt sander came out a dark maroonish red/brown .

I think they did a CKD = complete knock down and sent plans jigs to assemble the wooden body parts. So the assumption is next they used a local hardwood in plentiful supply....walnut.

I don't know this for sure , just using deductive reasoning.

mike

I used ash wood I don't know if that's correct
But that's what I used I my 30

1931 was not the first year for a black steering wheel. The 1929 and 1930 wood steering wheels were painted black at the factory.

And with the exception of 1928, the steering wheels were wood painted black in 1927, and 1926, and 1925, and 1924.........

The Dog is right, 1929 - '30 steering wheels were Maple painted black. Any closed grained hard wood would be suitable when the original finish is used.
Don, in the book "75 years of Chevrolet" page 51, makes reference to the new polished and notched Walnut steering wheel for 1925. I believe they were painted black before then...

Just like several more errors in that book is the statement that 1925 had a 'natural' finish, not so, unless you call black natural.

Thanks everyone for all the replies. It looks as if I will be using either Hickory or Oak.

Yep, if you are working on a 4 cylinder, throw away George Dammann's "75 Years" and "60 Years." There is more that is wrong than right in there, unfortunately, on the early cars.

You have to remember, these cars are 90 and 100 years old now. If they have been lucky enough to survive, they have been "worked on" by generations of people. Many or even most people think that sanding down the pretty wooden steering wheel and varnishing it makes it look nice. And it does. So someone may very well have long since sanded all remnants of black paint off and applied vanish in the 1930's when the paint started to wear off - and again after the War, again in the '60's, and so on.

They did the same thing to the factory black painted wheels, too.

You see, in the Teens and Twenties, wood was perceived to be a cheap and common material. By painting it uniformly black, it gave it more "class" - made it look "machine made," thus more desirable.

That same logic in the late 1930's and early 40's made PLASTIC highly desirable. It was a new material, high tech - it could be made into all kinds of exotic shapes and various colors. So it was cool and you WANTED to have neat fashionable plastic radio knobs (for example) instead of common chrome plated metal. Today, of course, we think exactly the opposite.

QUESTION, WHY WOULD YOU USE HICKORY OR OAK, ARE THOSE SPECIES NATIVE TO ARGINTINA / BRAZIL ? . If THE STEERING WHEEL WAS MADE THERE IT WOULD BE A NATIVE WOOD.


MIKE

I guess the correct wood might well be Brazilian walnut or something, but from memory Argentina does not have many forests so if it was Brazilian it would be imported anyway.
As someone said above, any close grained hardwood. At the moment the guy who will do the wheel has Hickory and Oak in stock, but I will have a talk with him following this discussion.
I guess that knowing he had Hickory I kind of hoped that that might be correct

(Just checked with Wikipedia Argentina. does have forests, but seems like recent plantings.)

peter, oops, well, i live, i learn. my "clear" '30 wheel is Not typical i guess. i'll go out and look hard at the joining seams tomorrow; maybe dark stain there. jim

They used BRAZILIAN WALNUT . Its what came out of the wood frame of my car.

mike