Walnut Maple Wagon Wheel Clock

Maple Birch Woodworking Studio Verified independent store

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It carried everything you owned across a thousand miles of nothing. The least you can do is hang it on the wall. The wagon wheel is the original American design object. From the 18 40s through the 1870s, hundreds of thousands of families loaded everything they had into a wooden box on four wheels and pointed it west. The wheel that carried them was a precisely engineered thing — a hardwood hub at the center, wooden spokes radiating outward under tension, a continuous rim holding the whole structure together. It was not decorative. Every element existed because it had to. Remove one spoke and the wheel failed. Shorten the rim and the wheel failed. It was honest engineering, and it crossed the continent on that honesty. This clock was built with that same logic in mind. The outer ring and the central hub are solid American Black Walnut — dense, dark, authoritative, the wood that has been doing the structural work in American craft since before the Revolution. The ring is continuous, turned true, beveled at its inner edge where the spokes meet it. The hub is a solid walnut disc, small and composed at the center of everything. The twelve spokes are Bird's Eye Maple — pale, luminous, each one shot through with the scattered knot-eyes that make this figure one of the most prized in North American woodworking. They radiate outward from the hub to the rim, crossing the open negative space between them, and that space matters as much as the wood itself. You can see the wall behind them. Light passes through. The clock breathes. The brass hands sweep from the walnut hub, warm gold against dark brown, marking the hours across open air. At 18 inches across, this clock doesn't just hang on a wall. It makes a claim about it. Outer ring and hub: Solid American Black Walnut Spokes: Solid Bird's Eye Maple — 12 spokes, open construction Hands: brass Diameter: 18 inches Movement: Precision quartz Finish: Natural Finish Handmade — each clock is one of a kind Twelve spokes. Open air. One unbroken ring. Built like it means it. Show more