How to Make Wheels & Tires
ONE OF the most frustrating problems the scale modeler often faces is locating or making the proper wheel and tire-especially the tire. It would seem by now that the wheel manufacturing companies would have a complete line of kinds and sizes. True, one can find a fair selection of air-wheel types but only a few of the others like pre-World War I, World War I, and the 20s and 30s. I wonder why? One of my pet model areas is the WW I flying scale, usually around 1 inch = 1 foot. Years ago I thought that the "O" ring people would surely have the sizes I wanted. No luck. If the tire diameter was right, the section size would be too thin. I usually ended up with 1/4" rubber tubing and a lousy joint using a slug of dowel.
How to Make Wheels & Tires
A CURRENT project is a 1 1/2"-scale Curtiss Fledgling. The full scale tire was 30" O.D. × 5" D. This makes the model tire 3 3/4" O.D. × 5/8" D. and as such may be classified as a big tire. The mold, Fig. 6, was sized to 3 5/8" O.D., 1/8" undersized for a tight rim fit. Since this tire had over four times the amount of rubber over the biggest yet made, I allowed two days for curing. The results were good although I felt the 43-gram weight was high. But then, I have a light-weight complex anyway. This gave rise to the idea of making this tire hollow. It was felt that the additional work involved would be worthwhile because of the weight savings, and the novelty.
