The tyres were machined from sandwiched acrylic sheet.What I did was sandwich 4 pieces of over diameter cut squares of .4 mm
Acrylic and locate the centre drill a hole and mount it to a mandrel .
Once I did this I mounted it in my lathe chuck and turned the basic shape of the outside Diameter of the tyre.
I then cut the inside Diameter which leaves me with a round ring .
The next step was to reverse the Chuck jaws and remount the disk so as I could start shaping the outer Tyre profile, This is a job which I find easier to do with a course file ( bit like wood turning) Once I have a profile I'm happy with It I then clean the course surface with different grades of course down to finer grades of Abrasive papers.
Now the tyre pattern is mounted to my mill chuck which is mounted to my dividing head, I used a 40 division plate on this particular tyre pattern .
The way it works is the over head mill is fitted with a fine disk cutter, while the cutter rotates at high speed the tyre pattern is rotated verticely and the cutter is wound in to the tyre creating a small cut , the tyre is the rotated on the dividing head and locked onto its next division and the same process is repeated again until I reached the entire 360 degree turn around the whole wheel!!This process is very teadious:hipno:
Many differnt cutting patterns can be created using this process ,
I'm very lucky that on the real bike both front and back tyres are Identical , which makes it much easier as I only made the one "pattern Tyre" and Recast it in rubber.If I were to make more than one model of the same subjet I can cast as many patterns as I desire.
As far as rubber casting is concerned I have a friend who does all my casting work for me It's much easier and a lot less messy !! I have tried it myself but find it takes away from my building time .
Sean