OT:Historic axle/wheel bearings

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Fairly certain they used a form of grease even on wood to wood.

[newshound]

I'm surprised you can't find anything in google. IIRC carriage/chariot wheels go back several thousand years (Assyrians?).

Duncan Dowson wrote a paper on man's attempts at lubrication back to prehistoric times. I'll see if I can find a copy.

[newshound]

OK not Dowson's, but similar subject matter

[newshound]

[Jethro_uk]

Thanks for all the pointers.

Googles usefulness continues to decline.

I've *seen* countless horse-drawn carriages in museums, and on TV experimental archaeology progs. But they are suspiciously silent on how wheels were made to rotate on the axle with enough life to make the carriage/cart/chariot a viable proposition. After all, it's no use going to war if you need to be replacing parts every mile.

I was a bit clumsy in my OP. Presumably metal could have been worked to make some sort of sleeve to take a wooden axle ? Or alternatively worked into an axle to be run inside a coated wooden hole ?

But prior to the invention of bearings (taper/ball) which require metal (point about wooden ones notwithstanding) there must still have been a way to get an axle to rotate in something ?????

[Robin]

Sorry but I couldn't see any reference in that to wheels other than the general one to axle bearings using tallow in early civilizations after

3500BC. What have I missed please about earlier use of wheels?

[David]

Lignum vitae is a self lubricating wood, but I don't think it was available at the time you are considering.

It was certainly used for all sorts of shaft bearings right up until the

1960s so I think that your starting point (that a functional bearing has to feature metal on metal) is probably wide of the mark.

Metal used to be very scarce and also very expensive so fairly primitive transport systems such as wheelbarrows would have had solid wood wheels and solid wood axles running in wooden bearings.

Lubrication is a wonderful thing, and also the nice thing about wood is that it grows on trees so wooden components would have been easily replaceable.

Cheers

Dave R

[Chris Hogg]

Extracts from the Engineering and Technology History Wiki, Wheels

"We owe most of what is known about wheel construction to the Egyptian custom of burying useful articles in royal tombs. Six complete (although dismantled) chariots were retrieved from the tomb of Tutankhamen. Those examples date from around 1000 B.C., by which time the art of chariot building was well evolved. Chariots were then being used both as sporting vehicles and as war machines. The Tutankhamen chariots represent a late stage in an evolution that had begun around

1600 B.C."

and

"Tutankhamen's chariots give us an opportunity to study the details of wheels and axles. The aspect that is most striking to a present-day engineer is that the axles were made of wood and the wheels bad {sic; presumable should be 'had'} wooden journals. The favored materials were elm and birch, which were imported because neither wood was native to Egypt.

Anyone accustomed to modern practice finds it hard to believe that wood-on-wood could function as a bearing at all. This primitive arrangement was improved in a few cases by the addition of a leather bushing. Lubrication in the form of animal fat or tallow is known to have been used, although the exact composition has not been determined.

The hub, called the nave in archaeological publications, was of exaggerated length. This design was dictated by the bearing fit, which could not have been very good, given the primitive nature of the tools used to make it. Even if the wooden bearings were tight to begin with, they certainly would have worn out of round. The length was thus needed to minimize wobbling of the wheel on the shaft rather than to reduce bearing pressure.

Despite their primitive nature, these wheels were capable of impressive performance. They operated over rough terrain at the speed of galloping horses."

[Jethro_uk]

Important point (presupposes an infrastructure capable of delivering regular imports)

Well, that's where I started ...

Well, if they did, that's my initial curiosity sated. That said, I'm trying to imagine a world where axle bearings were replaced with horses ?????

[Chris Hogg]

Eh?

[Cursitor Doom]

Aye, they did. Then along came babbit and everything was wonderful.