WHEELS

by  W.M. Elzerman

In the many years I have been making card- or papermodels I've developed a personal method for making  wheels. In many cases the modeldesigns are using glueing-tabs at either the circular sides or at the treads' strip. Both gave often a ' facetted' curve instead of a nice smooth rounding. 
The techniques used are simple straight cutting, some layering and "butt-joints". Butt-joints are thes kinds of joint were the parts are glued together only using the edge of the paper. When possible extra reinforcement is done by adding glue in an invisible corner.
Especially with car- and vehiclemodels the looks of wheels are very important. I have seen many nice builds been 'destroyed' by bad looking wheels. Somehow they attract much attention, certainly when it is an open wheeled vehicle like a racingcar.

Basically a cardmodels' wheel is made of 3 parts: a strip-part for the tread and 2 discs for the sides. In this description the discs are also 3- dimensional. 

First I cut the parts without any glueingtabs. Edges which will be visible afterwards get some touch-up coloring. I use simple waterbased paint for this, but also felttips or colorpencil can do the job.
In most cases the original glueing tabs are unusable. So next thing is to 'scratch-build' some. In this example I cutted 2 rings of the same size as the sidepart and divided them into 8 pieces. These  inner- and outer-rings  provided 16 needed tabs for 4 wheels.
The sidediscs are closed with the inner-tab only AFTER scoring. The circular scoring was done using a fitting template: an appropiate circle cut out of a piece of thick cardboard. Some moving around inside with a scooringtool and you're done.

 The following step is building the rims. This time it's a simple construction, pillbox-like. It is glued on its place and the total is set aside to dry.

When dry the folding of the sidediscs is very simple: just start gently at one edge of the joint and bend down. You will notice the fold 'growing' almost by itself around the disc. Work all around and adjust where needed.

Close the side with the outer-tab.

Here's the same part from the opposite side.

At the left partly folded and at the right completely done and closed with an outer-tab.

The tread-part is made of the original strip and layered-up with an evenly wide, but over twice as long strip. 

The long strip is glued halfway the original after both were curved by dragging them over a tables-edge, or a round stick. This gives the strips a roundgoing curl. 

Before the glue is totally dry the circle is closed and adjusted as round as possible by hand.

Now the edges of the sidedisc get some glue. Let it dry until it gets sticky, but not completely dry! Then both parts are joined and adjusted to make a good round shape. Set aside the let further dry.

It may even happen that not on all corners the glue has tacked. No problem as long as the parts are on the right place. By spreading additional glue on the insidecorners the joint is completed and reinforced. Again set aside to let it dry.

Finally the other sidedisc is put in its place. The edges of it get again some glue, dried until sticky or tacky. The inside edge of treadpart gets a fair amount of glue and is instantly put in place on the side disc. Do the necessairy adjustments and set aside with the last added discside down. Gravity will do it's job and the glue wil flow more or less from the treadpart in to the corner with the disc. Because it is in a closed box the drying will go slow and the flow has more time. Sofar this has worked always for me...
Last is some sanding and touching up of the outside-corner when desired. I use fine-grit waterproof sandingpaper and a felttip. The pictures below show both stages: before and after sanding/touching-up. Unfortunatly the flashlight of my camara makes the touch-up much more apparant  then in reality.  

GOODLUCK !!