Art of wagon wheel shodding lives on

Historic cannons fired at Great Trek celebration

Last month, we gave you a preview of a demonstration that Basil Mills and his son Steven would be doing at the Great Trek annual commemoration, at the Karel Landman Monument, near Alexandria on Saturday December 16.

In this edition, we’re please to bring you photos of the event (and confirmation that the old art of shodding a wagon wheel is still alive and well).

For your benefit we’re sharing again the details of this amazing engineering exercise.

Basil Mills doesn’t just talk about boer and settler culture: he brings it to life.

From battle re-enactments with his SABRE (SA Battle Reenactment) crew (including real fire from historic cannons) to the art of crossing a river or how to yoke up an ox to pull a wagon, he cuts straight through to the practicalities of the matter.

It’s the talented artist and craftsperson’s love for grassroots engineering and local history that saw him giving the demonstration at the commemoration.

Mills and his crew demonstrated wheel-shodding —

putting a metal rim around a wooden wagon wheel.

Mills and his team carried out the living exhibition under the banner of the Bathurst Agricultural Museum (BAM) and in partnership with fellow adventurer and BAM stalwart Jon Pieters.

Pieters’s project was an amazing odyssey from Bathurst to the Karel Landman monument near Alexandria. His plan was to travel in a hand-built wagon, drawn by a mule.

For the story of that adventure, together with some inspiring images, visit the website of the photographer and storyteller Neville Lance: https://www.nevillelance.com/ jonpietersodyssey.

Mills explained what he and his crew would be doing.

Read his explanation below, and then enjoy some photographs of the SABRE crew demonstrating some black powder skills and weaponry, including firing a Napoleonic period half pounder muzzle loader black powder cannon, at the December 16 event.

Here you go:

It is very unusual and rare to be able to witness the old village wheelwright craft tradition of fitting an iron tyre band onto a wagon wheel.

This craft has almost disappeared without trace.

We are proud to be able to show the youth the skill and knowledge of this old craft which is passed down by apprenticeship.

In bygone days, all the wheels were hand made.

The wood was handsawn in sawpits, chalked and the wood was seasoned for up to a year.

We, as Bathurst Agricultural Museum volunteers, will be demonstrating the parts of the wagon wheel and how the iron tyre rim is to be fitted first by using a traveller.

A large circular fire is made, heating the iron tyre rim in the fire until dull red.

The master wheelwrights are Basil Mills and Jon Peters and with the help of journeymen (three strong chosen and trained young men) they lift the tyre with tyre dog tongs and drop it on the wagon wheel rim before hammering it down with sledge hammers.

There is lots of smoke as hot iron burns wood. Once the iron tyre is connected into place, the journeymen then walk around the hot tyre using watering cans of water to quench the iron tyre rim.

Then buckets of water are poured over the hot tyre and the steam will replace the smoke.

As the iron band cools and shrinks sharply and tightly the wheel is revolved to be cooled in a bath of water.

Picture: STEVEN MILLS FIRE! Gunpowder ignites as the Napoleonic era muzzle loader is fired.

DEEP DISCUSSIONS: Bathurst Agricultural Museum curator Ryno Hatting, talks to Jon Pieterse, whose project was to bring a mule-drawn handmade wagon on the back roads from Bathurst to the Karel Landman Monument. ANCIENT SKILLS: Steven Mills and dad Basil Mills show how the metal rim will be carried to the wagon wheel once it’s hot, during the shodding.

LIVING HISTORY: Bathurst Agricultural Museum volunteers and SABRE members relax after setting up at their campsite at the Karel Landman Monument near Alexandria, on December 16 2023.

HAVING A BLAST: Members of the SA Battle Re-enactment (SABRE) pose beside the Napoleonic period half pounder muzzle loader black powder cannon that was fired earlier.