The spokes had to be angled in or out to flex when hitting rocks to keep from busting the wheel apart.
They used to made the wooden rim of the wheel from straight peices of wood that were soaked, steamed hot and then bent into the correct arc. They were held in that shape and dried for six weeks to hold that arc to make the wooden rim.
How did they "weld" the steel rim before welding machines?
Perhaps crossfire could shed some light on this.

Google forge welding. Blacksmiths have been able to weld for centuries.

Forge welding.

In fact my Great Grandfather was a blacksmith, and I have an old metal corn grinder handle that he repaired for someone using forge welding.

A family friend talked about welding in a forge, I'd like to try it.
Forges are not as common as they once were, and they need forge coal to work the best.

Most bladesmiths and many artisan blacksmiths have gone to natural gas or propane fired forges.

That makes sense, do I recall the carbon in coal as changing the steel when forging?

Yep, forge welding was used to make gun barrels as well, hammered around a mandrel.
That rim was expanded by heating, then cooled quickly to prevent a burn in. Hardest part is sizing it correctly. (Note the wheel gauge).
Hammer forging is used in folding knife blades.
You can raise the carbon level by incasing a blade in clay and baking it (so I hear) and adjust the hardness/temper by the temp, time, and how it is cooled. Also the temper will be different at different parts of the blade, if done correctly.
Metal working is an interesting subject in itself.
(I make armor and weapons as a hobby.)

The naturally aspirated propane forge you've pictured can LIQUIFY steel, if one gets careless,....BTDT.

GTC

The blacksmith shop we used for years used to, back in the 60's used to fire up the forge every morning. The torch replaced it over time.

another 50 years it will be forgotten

no one left to build a cathedral now.

Depending on how the smith handles the fire and the steel in the forge he can either burn the carbon out of it by oxidation, or add carbon in through carburization. That's one of the beauties of a coal or charcoal forge and a skilled smith.

Over time, the iron tires on a wagon wheel would become loose. Here is the gizzy that they used to "shrink" the iron tire to make it snug again...

Thanks guys. I wasnt aware of some of that. I knew they did it but didnt know how or for how long ago.

We have two of the old forges here yet.

Not too many years ago, people referred to as "Wrights" or "Smiths" were actually artists.

Nowadays, any American college student leeching off their parents or the gubmint teat can perform an act worthy of Josef Mengele and be called an "artist."

I'll inject, when the smiths could get generator arc welders, they did.

There are ways of combing arc welding, and hammering the welded area to shape, and do what is wanted.

Prior to the late 19th century that wheel rim was probably wrought iron, rather than steel. Steel was expensive stuff until processes like the Bessemer convertor came along,

Wrought iron has very little carbon content, which makes it easy to forge and weld, but it has nowhere near enough to allow you to increase hardness by quenching and tempering as you can do with medium carbon steel for example. It tends to be pretty tough and not bad for corrosion resistance, at least as compared to your early steels.

As a kid in the 1950's I had heard of some of the many things blacksmiths could do from some old timers who were friends of my grandparents, (and even older than my grandparents). I recall hearing about them welding stuff but they never mentioned forge welding. All I remember is "They got it red hot and beat the hell out of it", or something to that effect. That was real interesting; thanks for posting.

It's been 40 years since I fired a forge. But for a fact red hot ain't anywhere near hot enough. You have to go past yellow, all the way to white if you're gonna hammer it into a weld.

I imagine magnetic induction and hydraulics would save the rotator cuff.

Tag.....

Modern version would be something like this vintage power hammer
https://youtu.be/WH9D6yBJwQk
But water driver power hammers are very old, very large, and very loud. Last one I saw was at least 15-20' in the shop, and more outside.
https://youtu.be/OVmF6Nsf77Q

Some folks even go a bit extreme...
https://youtu.be/E0ICdvaU94o

Last year I stumbled on a PBS show, looked like it was filmed in the 1960s, of a guy making a muzzleloader, from scratch, with nothing more than blacksmith tools. Very interesting how it all came together.

At Sovreign Hill in Ballarat Australia there is a wagon wheel manufacturing plant making new wheels with 1860 era machines. It is fascinating to watch them turn a seasoned section of a tree trunk into a completed hub, ready for the spoke installation in a matter of a few minutes, moving from one specialty machine to next down the production line.

Charcoal forges were common in Africa when I was there, I'm recalling adobe-type fire pits for charcoal and traditionally-shaped bellows operated by hand, familiar-shaped anvils too. I never paid enough attention to them.

There are a lot of diffrent sizes and typed of anvils.
I just traded a box of deer antlers to a knife maker for a #100 Fisher anvil. 1850-1870 (iirc)

Thanks, those were fun to watch.

My mother-in-law gave my son his grandad's forge - and I have his tire shrinker - an interesting (and heavy) artifact. It may have come from Fort Union.

I've got a couple hundred pounds of 150 year old tire and sleigh shoe bolts in their original boxes.

There are more than a few of those 25# little Giant power hammers around and in use. A buddy has one in his shop as well as a large air powered hammer.

Forge welding can be done with a propane Forge, but one has to put the fuel to it to get sparking get hot. It's much easier in a coal/Coke Forge. Also a lot easier to vaporize the work piece too.

old skill Wagon wheels, sAmurai swords, Norseman ship building and European late 18th century warship building (have a look at HMS Victory),
medieval armor manufacture techniques,stone masonry etc... necessity is a great driving force in learning, development and refinement.

the great things old societies have done with the relatively little tech they had but great ingenuity, but of course some of it proved
rather ground breaking for its time..like revolutionary steam power compared to the horse & bullock.

Yup,....VERY hard to control at forge welding temperatures. There's a pretty good cache of very old wrought iron implements and artifacts piled up around here, grist for the blacksmith's mill, as it were. Some of the tools are pre-territorial colonial and super durable, very fine finishes after hundreds of years exposure. A LOT of the mining tools from the Territorial Period were forged with locally available bituminous coals, and are litterally falling apart,....they'll need to be smelted, and all of those oxides floated off,....dunno if I can pull that off.
The fundamental difference between good wrought iron and steels / properties of material are no longer commonly emphasized in our votech and metal shop classes, and haven't been for quite a while.
Malleability , ductility, tensile strengths, vaporization versus oxidation,....etc, etc., etc.....
I'm meeting a lot of somewhat confused and ill prepared younger hands these days,.....and continue to lobby hard for getting back to these basics in first year classes.
Anybody here ever used Red Fir bark in lieu of forging coal ?

GTC

.....A slow, unwieldy, pretentious, TUB, crosstrees and "Castles" full of targets in red coats.....compared to the USS Constitution,....she's a SHIP, built by free men.

My pleasure.

My grandfather was a blacksmith. While he died before I was born, I've heard a lot about his great strength. Forge welding builds very strong arms on someone who does it regularly.

Back in the 1970's, the Arkansas Highway Department moved their Central shop from Jacksonville, Arkansas to West Little Rock, Arkansas. They had a sale after the move and there were a lot of old stuff that I craved, but had no money to buy, nor skills to use. Among them were a large coal forge, a power hammer and a large anvil. The anvil must have weighed 700-800 lbs. Lots of hand tools to go with these items. This shop was in an old building that was used during WWII in some capacity and I think these things were from that era. I did not get to attend the sale and would have been barred from bidding as I was a employee, but I had no money anyway. miles

Up the road about a half mile is the old farm owned by my best friend's parents, their parents before them and maybe their parents. It had a helluva lot of old outbuildings when we were kids. One time we went in one of them and it was a blacksmith's shop, complete with the old forge and tools. There were a bunch of iron wagon wheel rims and some wooden spokes still in their, waiting to be put together. My kin came to Kansas in the 1870's but were latecomers compared to his.

Drifting farther off topic, I am fascinated with the old belt lines the machine shops had years back.

Before and during the Great Depression, my Grandfather was the area blacksmith. I remember going into his shop, when I was a kid, and playing with his tools. He had a forge and a bellows? that was on a stand and you cranked the handle. It looked like a big blow dryer. When the state took the place, all that equipment disappeared.

That anvil alone probably went for more than $2000.00. They are hard to find. There are forums devoted to anvils.