Tyring

Hoop-tyres, I have said before, were a comparatively new invention, and had not even yet, in 1884, quite superseded strakes. By that time however they were the usual thing. Wheels were made somewhat differently for them. In the mode of putting them on improvements were still being carried out.

Already the more primitive methods of tyring had been given up. I remember seeing, as a boy, the ring of fire built up round the tyres on the ground; remember too how my father in dry weather syringed water on to the tarred weather-boards of surrounding sheds to prevent any spark from the too near fire setting light to them. But there had been changes in these matters before I began to work at the shop. Especially the open fire on the ground had been replaced by an upright brick oven --"the furnace"--a yard or two farther from the sheds, and nothing like so dangerous to them. It opened upon the yard, and had two cast-iron half-doors. Outside ran the public lane, where wayfarers might feel the brick-work of the furnace warm if wheels were being tyred.

Apart from its greater safety I am not sure that the furnace had any advantages over the old form of fire on the ground. Inconveniences there were, at any rate. Imagine a sort of oven tall enough for a man to stand upright in, and deep enough, from front to back, for him to lie at length in, yet not more than twelve or fourteen inches wide, if as much as that. Here, a pair of waggon tyres, but no more, could stand up side by side. A little room beside them was wanted for fresh firing to be thrown in now and then; a little room, for inserting the long-handled "dog" that gripped a tyre which needed turning round. For this the furnace-man in the yard jerked open from afar the top half-door--immediately a scorching heat came out--and desperately struggled with his tyre until the lower curve of it, red-hot, had been turned up out of the fire to be replaced by the upper curves, only black as yet; but however careless of being scorched was the furnace-man, he could not get the tyres equally hot all round, as in the old-fashioned flat fires. On the other hand, if they were too hot, heavy tyres standing were liable to sink down with their own weight into a long and unmanageable ellipse. They would have been better on the ground. Moreover, at the best only two tyres could be heated at one time. Without doubt a flat fire would have been an advantage in each of these respects. But the upright brick furnace perhaps economised heat. The first pair of tyres might take half-an-hour or more to get hot enough for putting on. They could be set-in on the newly-lit fire just before eight o'clock breakfast. The men, coming back at half-past eight, would soon find them fit to put on. A second pair would get hot more quickly; and before long tyres might be put in and pulled out again as fast as the wheels for them could be got ready.

To be got ready to have its tyre put on, a wheel had to be screwed down on to the tyring platform--a circular iron platform, "true out o' wind" no doubt, cemented down to the ground conveniently near to the tyre-furnace. Big enough for the biggest wheel, and about an inch and a quarter thick, this platform had a hole in the middle to admit the wheel-hub, and out of the very centre of this hole rose an iron bar, to go up through the hub, which had to be threaded on to it. A screw arrangement, atop of this central bar, enabled a workman to draw down and tighten the hub, while all the rim of the wheel lay outspread on the surrounding platform. So the wheel was fixed face downwards for the operation, screwed tight.

Close at hand, with a supply of watering-cans around them, stood two, or perhaps three, barrels of water for cooling ("colding") the tyre as soon as it was properly on the wheel. Rainwater-butts they were, taking the drip from the adjacent sheds. In my boyhood I had delighted to mess about with them; had invented the name "hammerhead," for the little wriggling red larvae with which they were infested. In after years I found that, in a spell of dry weather, when there were many tyres, the water-butts had to be draped with wet sacks to prevent them from falling to pieces, unless they could be kept filled with water from the pump at the dwelling-house next the shop. A tiresome job this for apprentices or labourers, seeing that the pump was thirty yards away, downhill past some steps and round several corners. Still, water was wanted for tyres--was wanted most often in hot weather. And if the conditions of getting it were those of a mediaeval village--well, there might be worse things than working in the middle-ages, though it was not too profitable.

Now to go back to the "hotting" of the tyres in the furnace. This job my father had been wont to take on himself, but during his illness and after his death Will Hammond took it on--as far as I know without dispute. (I find it very wonderful, the way these men worked together for the good of the business, with little but their own amiable good sense to tell them what to do.) The fuel was waste wood from the saw-pits or from waggons or carts under repair. A few old dry boards from the bottom of a dung-cart, tossed in whole atop of the tyres, soon filled the furnace with flame and hurried up the work accordingly.

Looking round therefore to see that all was ready--that the sundry dogs and sledges lay at hand near the water-cans round the tyring platform--Will summoned helpers. Though I was not man enough to take my father's place, I liked to be present even as "boy." There were two other men besides Will--the chief of them the wheelwright whose wheel was to be done. He, after giving another turn, perhaps, to the screw that held the wheel down, took his place nearest the furnace doors; then, armed with tyring dogs, the three of us watched, expectant, where Will Hammond was unlatching even the lower door of the furnace.

And now the heat came out--you could hardly face it--and with the heat one tyre, red-hot or nearly so. (Sometimes both tyres came, tangled up with half-burnt and flaring wood; but that meant trouble and shouting.) With a clever movement of Will's strong wrist, aided by a pull from the wheelwright's dog, the tyre was thrown over (face-side down) on to the ground, where little bits of dust and wood rubbish it fell on burst out into sparks or instant flame. But no time for mischief of that sort was given. Hooking our dogs over the tyre the three of us lifted it and ran with it to the wheel. As soon as a proper place could be found (for the nail-holes drilled in it had to come over the middles, not the joints, of the felloes) one section of the tyre was dropped over the rim, and the rest of it was pulled and sledgehammered to the wheel, and at last hammered home. Often I had to hold it down with the sledge on one side, to keep it from jumping up there while being hammered down on the opposite side. For, though expanded by the heat, a tyre was even then none too large; and we had anxious, impatient, gasping moments, until it had gone over the felloes all round and been sledgehammered near the matter into its destined place. Before that could be, the dry timber the wheel was built of was bursting into flame wherever the hot iron touched it. Smoke that half choked you, half blinded you, rose in blue and tingling clouds. There was a call for water. You seized a watering-can; poured the water hissing and bubbling on to the tyre, going round as far as you could, then hurried to the water-butt for another canful. Old Will, having shovelled back into the furnace any glowing coals that had been dragged out and shut the cast-iron doors again, came hobbling up (he had a game leg) to give any help he might. The wheelwright and the other man went round "setting" the felloe joints into proper place; another can of water was put round, and then--

Then one began to see why the wheel had been screwed down, face-downwards. Remember, it had been built with a "dish"--a hollowness in front, a convexity at back. But now the quickly tightening tyre-- tightening as the water cooled it --had pulled the wheel over still more "dish," as you could see. As the screw on the middle was loosened, the stock, set free from that pressure, rose up, an inch or more. How much, was an important matter. Will Hammond squinted across the wheel, the wheelwright squinted across it, each desirous of seeing how far his own judgment, his own endeavours, had been well applied.

But I am forgetting. Before this scrutiny the wheel had to be lifted up off the platform, and, as the tyre was still hottish as well as heavy, the lifting had to be done gingerly. The best way was for two to do it on opposite sides, balancing one another. As soon as the central screw-bar was cleared, one of the two set down his side of the wheel on to the ground; and now the other man held it up, slanting. Then he drew it upright, for the scrutiny above mentioned, and after a moment trundled it away to the shoeing-hole. This was a narrow pit, about five feet long, kept full of water and designed for this sort of purpose. But it took a fairly strong and sure man to "run" a wheel into it. Some knack at least was called for. A newly-tyred wheel might easily weigh a hundred and fifty pounds; its tyre, on the way to the shoeing-hole, was still too blistering hot to be touched; the man ran behind it, with the convex side to his right (or else he had sundry weird difficulties with it); yet just at the last he had to get to the front of it, as it ran down into the hole and set the water boiling there. Knack, as I say, was involved in doing all this easily, and afterwards in "swinging" the wheel, as it stood up in the shoeing-hole, with its back against a low post there. The said post had holes bored through it. A stiff iron bar, thrust through the stock of the wheel and then into one of these same holes, made it possible to lift the wheel and keep it swinging round and round until the tyre was cool; and others could do this. But perhaps I had been kept at school too long to learn these knacks myself; for apprentice boys seemed to have none of the reluctance that withheld me from trying. While it was still swinging, the careful wheelwright looked all round his handiwork, hammering the felloe joints into final place, before the tyre got any colder. When this also was done, he on one side and another on the opposite side gripped each a spoke; the wheel was lifted up out of the shoeing-hole, and now, tyred at last, was ready to be finished off.

But what was that click it gave as often as not, when it was bumped on to the ground ? A series of clicks, of which this was the last, a succession of sounds like the snap of a toy pistol, had been coming from the wheel as the water was poured on it from the first. I liked to hear these noises. They were the sound of spokes going home into their mortices, dowels into their dowel-holes. They told that the tyre was doing, its work. More than ablest workman could do with sledge and wedges, this shrinking hoop of iron was pulling the wheel together all round, and would not be gainsaid. If there was no further "give" in tenon or dowel, then the terrible tyre would bend the oak spokes themselves, and the dozen three-inch spokes that had been so straight were now bowed forward as if with an incipient spinal curvature. To obviate disasters of this kind--there were several sorts of them--the wheelwright was careful to leave a slight space between his felloes, for the tyre to pull up. Therefore the new wheel was left "open-jointed." But after the tyre had been cooled the felloe-joints were as tight together as if they had grown so. It was their getting so that largely accounted for that snapping sound.

Proof of what had happened could be seen. It has been said that the wheel was painted before being tyred. Putty (which needs paint, or it will not cling) had been pushed into all the joints and all the shakes in the wood to keep any water from getting in; but now the pressure of the tyre had squeezed most of it back again.

It was especially worth noticing how the seams of putty stood up on the stock from end to end. Sunshakes, longitudinal, were in my view the mark of a good stock. My father, it was credibly told me, had been wont to say that a stock might safely be in two halves, longitudinally, if only it could be worked up; for the spokes, pressed down by the tyre, would not fail to hold it together. And now the truth of this was plain enough. Forced in towards the centre by the shrinking tyre, the spokes had jammed up the stock and closed the shakes that had gaped open for years. Truly, a longitudinal crack never mattered. It was only when a crack appeared across the meshes that a stock had to be given up. The tyre would not tighten it that way; the best place for it was the fire. But tyring would effectually close up any split running through the stock from back to front.

Notes

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Dog: (a) the furnace dog--a round bar with wooden handle for turning the tyres round in the furnace; (b) stout bars of square iron for picking up a red-hot tyre pulled out of the furnace.

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Felloe: One of the wooden sections of the rim of the wheel.

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Shakes: natural splits in the wood

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