Adding wood to the steering wheel

Post project writeups, ideas, DIY mods and off the shelf modifications and improvements. Also "Known Issues" and their resolutions.
Post Reply
User avatar
kdarling
Senior Member
Posts: 726
Joined: October 20th, 2015, 6:57 am
Location: Northern NJ

Adding wood to the steering wheel

Post by kdarling »

So... for my 1994 Concourse...

I'd already made my own wood dash, just for fun... and to save $150 buying a fake one, which is what I'd usually do. But I was missing having a partial wood steering wheel, like in my Jeep Commander Overland.

So I decided to finally try to learn how to add wood to a steering wheel, something I'd always wanted to do.

I went on eBay and bought a spare wheel for about $60 to work on. Then I hit Sears and bought a router + table for $100. A dozen blocks of cherry for $30 came from eBay, too. I already had stain and urethane from the dash project.

I searched the internet for tutorials, but the few examples were about making a fully round wood wheel, which in some ways is actually much easier to do. (Easier to make circular jigs than the arc I needed; no need to match ends, etc.) In the end, I had to come up with a lot of the method myself.

Anyway, long story short, after about a month of working on it a little bit a day, here's the result. I bought a steering wheel puller, removed the original wheel, and replaced it with my custom one:
dash2.png
The short version of all the steps is:
wheel-progress.jpg
The long version can be seen on my Pinterest page devoted to this wheel:
https://www.pinterest.com/kkadarling/di ... ing-wheel/

Now I can take the original wheel, and try to do a top AND bottom wood section on it.

Cheers!
Kev
1994 Concourse dinette, Ford 7.5L (460 V8)
User avatar
SMan
Senior Member
Posts: 635
Joined: February 17th, 2015, 1:57 pm
Location: 7 Lakes, WA

Re: Adding wood to the steering wheel

Post by SMan »

Very nice work! Looks like right out of the factory. Took some patience for sure.
I build guitars as a hobby and appreciate the effort that must have went into this.
Steve aka SMan
2004 Premier V10
User avatar
Blue~Go
Senior Member
Posts: 3716
Joined: July 31st, 2014, 1:01 am
Location: 1999 Concourse

Re: Adding wood to the steering wheel

Post by Blue~Go »

Nice work!

Ironically, I removed the wood from my dashboard and doors (I prefer it plain). If only we could have switched (but we have different dashboards). I never did have a wood-trimmed wheel though.
1999 Concourse
Post Reply