Real Walnut Steering Wheel
My car was originally ordered with the Deluxe Interior Decor which included upgraded upholstery featuring the iconic running ponies on the seat backs, upgraded door panels and door pulls, a courtesy light at the bottom of the door, “walnut woodgrain” instrument panel and glove box door, and the deluxe “walnut woodgrain” steering wheel. These “woodgrain” adornments were of course made of stamped vinyl and plastic. As a woodworker, I knew I could improve on this simulated woodgrain by replacing the plastic wheel rim and vinyl pieces with real walnut. Here I feature the steering wheel restoration.
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The first task was to disassemble the steering wheel and strip off the old plastic ring. This turned out to be quite a chore requiring saws, chisels and lots of elbow grease. The plating on the original wheel frame was also in poor condition. After several failed attempts to revive the finish with chrome polish and buffing wheels, I sent the whole thing out for re-plating
Here is the original steering wheel before the restoration. A common problem was shrinkage in the plastic woodgrain leading to ugly gaps in the rim. The original wheel rim is also very thin and is not very comfortable to grip. This restoration takes care of both those problems.
The new wood rim is made up of two pieces that are eventually sandwiched around the 1/4” thick metal ring that ties the wheel spokes together and provide the wheel frame. I visited my local woodworking store and picked out an evenly colored and grained board of walnut that was large enough to construct both the upper and lower rings. I planed the wood to uniform thickness (roughly 11/16” for the bottom ring and 7/16” for the top ring), ripped it into 3” wide slates and glued up two panels large enough for the 15.5” wheel diameter. With a router and a circle-cutting jig, I first cut a 1/4” groove for the wheel frame and then cut out the two rings.
On the left is the bottom ring showing the 1/4” groove into which the wheel frame will eventually be glued. On the right is the top ring. I drilled 18 shallow holes evenly spaced around the circumference of the top ring. These will eventually be filled with the tops of polished metal rivets to duplicate the “rivets” on the original wheel. In both the original and the new wood wheel these “rivets” simulate the actual rivets that may have been used to attach the rim to the wheel frame. The metal ring on the wheel frame was too narrow to allow real rivets for attachment. Instead, I used a heavy duty construction adhesive to attach the wood rings (see below)
I used a heavy-duty polyurethane construction adhesive to glue the bottom ring onto the wheel frame. Polyurethane is a good choice since it is an excellent way to bond dissimilar materials like wood and metal. The groove in the bottom wood ring was actually about 1/16” wider than 1/4” so that the glue could form a good grip around the metal ring. Clamps were used to hold the whole assembly together while the glue dried overnight. Glue that squeezed out was cleaned up with a dry cloth before it set up. On the right is a close-up of the assembly. Here you can see that while routing the groove and the ring I also routed a narrow shoulder on the inside and outside circumference of the bottom wood ring. These shoulders will eventually provide a place for the stainless steel rings that adorn the outer and inner circumference of the wheel (visible in the lefthand photo). Also note that before attaching the bottom ring, I cut a series of finger holds on a route table with a bullnose bit. This defined the initial shape and placement of the finger holds and greatly facilitated all the hand work to follow (below)
Next, the top wood ring is glued to the bottom assembly and held in place with clamps until the glue dries. You can never have enough clamps!! I chose Gorilla polyurethane glue for this step hoping to avoid the messy squeeze-out from the construction adhesive. This glue also is good for bonding wood to metal and an excellent waterproof glue for bonding wood to wood. The one disadvantage of Gorilla glue is that it expands slightly while curing. Unfortunately this expansion took the form of dried squeeze-out along the joint of the two wood rings. This led to countless hours of cleaning the glue off the stainless steel trim rings with an exact-knife which then led to the need to re-polish the rings all over again. Next time I’ll use the construction adhesive for this step!
The wheel with all the clamps removed. It is now ready for hours of hand shaping and sanding. I started by using a drum sander on my drill-press to smooth the inner and outer circumferences of the wheel. You might have noticed above that on the original plastic wheel the stainless steel bands were flush with the plastic rim. Because I used the original metal bands but wanted to make the steering wheel a little large in girth, the stainless steel rings on the new wheel are recessed slightly. I think they actually look better this way. I rounded all the edges with sandpaper and used a wood file to give the finger holds their final shape. This involved hours and hours of manual labor! When I was satisfied with the final shape of the wheel, I then used a progression of sandpaper up to 400 grit to arrive at a silky smooth surface. The polished rivets were then attached to the wheel face with epoxy.
After taping off the rivets and the metal band, I applied 4 coats of Danish oil followed by 6 coats of a wipe-on satin polyurethane. After the finish cured it was buffed out using 3M 3000 Swirl-remover. I think you can see this is a vast improvement over the shabby original wheel and shoulders above the reproduction I’ve had in my car up till now.
