FEATURE Archive
24 The Woodworker & Good Woodworking October 2019 http://www.getwoodworking.comWheelbarrow,
bed or planter?
Robin Gates deconstructs
a design from the
June 1927 issue of
The WoodworkerW
alking me home from primary
school in the 1960s, Mum
occasionally took the longer
route across fields where
archaeologists were excavating the remains
of Fishbourne Roman Palace. For the interested
passer-by they’d lift the corners of tarpaulins
to reveal the amazingly well-preserved mosaic
floors. But something else which stuck in
my memory was the sight of a tired student
lying back in their wheelbarrow, fast asleep.
The first thing that occurs to me about this
wheelbarrow design from the June 1927 issue
of The Woodworker is that it’d make a very
uncomfortable bed. And for much the same
reasons, it wouldn’t be the most practical
of load carriers around the garden.
The headboard, nearest the wheel, is too
steep. Just as you couldn’t lie against it, neither
would it help with tipping out the load. It ought
to be inclined at a more shallow angle, and
projecting over the wheel. A wheelbarrow
is essentially a class 2 lever, with the wheel being
the fulcrum, effort applied to the handles, and
the load placed amidships. The further forward
the load, the less effort is required to lift it.
At the opposite end, meanwhile, the knee
board is not only too steep but also too high.
Trying to hook your knees over this for a snooze,
you’d certainly be doubled up like a paperclip, but
more importantly, clearing a board this high with
a spade full of dirt would take double the effort,
and it’d almost certainly lead to overloading.An environmental no-brainer
Weighed against buying a wheelbarrow made
of plastic, building one in renewable wood is
an environmental no-brainer, but it strikes me
this design places looks above practicality. The
deep and shapely sides concentrate unnecessary
weight around the handles, and there’d be a lot
of wastage in cutting boards for the extravagant
curves both here and projecting forward to the
axle. In 1927, finding the required three elm
boards of around 1.5m × 0.4m × 25mm may
have been relatively easy, but given the scarcity
of elm today, and even substituting another
hardwood like oak, we’d probably have to glue
up the boards, and perhaps reinforce the rubbed
joints with cleats nailed on at right angles.
The head and knee boards are housed in
grooves, fastened through the sides into end-
grain, and it’d only be a matter of time beforethe outward force of the load pushed those joints
apart. At rest, the splayed legs could counteract
this but if a leg were to collide with anything while
airborne, it’d exert leverage on the side and extract
those end-grain fastenings with the efficacy of a
nail puller.Fine felloes
We’re told the wheel, with ash hub, oak spokes
and felloes, is ‘a rather interesting piece of work,
and is not really difficult.’ By making a full-size
drawing and templates to get the shape and
angles of the felloes right, perhaps I’d eventually
make a round-ish wheel, but the making of an iron
tyre that’s ‘heated red hot, driven over the felloes,
and cooled’ is well outside my comfort zone.In my view, this’d make a pretty wheelbarrow-
shaped planter, but not such a workable
wheelbarrow. Instead of building with heavy
boards assembled like a coffin, I’d try a frame-
based body with a pair of shafts, or ‘strines’,
running from handles to axle, joined amidships
by rails covered in by tongued & grooved bottom
boards – not forgetting drain holes bored at the
lowest point. The headboard would slope well
forward, and sides would taper to a token knee
board. The wheel could be wider than suggested,
so as not to dig into soft ground, and instead
of an iron tyre I’d recycle the rubber from an old
motorbike tyre that’d roll more quietly on paved
ground. Now, that might be a wheelbarrow I could
sleep on.