Crafting Vintage Vehicles

by Chuck Cecil

Wheelwright Tim Hoffman pours water on a hot rim of steel and momentarily disappears in a billowy cloud of steam at Hansen Wheel & Wagon Shop in Letcher, S.D. (pop. 160).

“We don’t use glue or nails to hold the spoke to the wheel, so the shrinking steel pulls everything up tightly for a strong bond,” says Hoffman, 31, who has been perfecting the art of wooden wheel making for six years.

After the hot steel rims shrink and cool, the wheels are painted and mounted on the 50 or so horse-drawn stagecoaches and other vintage wagon replicas that roll out of the shop each year. Owner Doug Hansen, 47, started the business in 1978 after spending his teen years fixing broken wagon wheels and repairing dilapidated buggies.

“My mom and granddad really got me started,” says Hansen, who learned woodworking and blacksmithing at Mitchell (S.D) High School and the nearby Mitchell Technical Institute. “She brought home an old broken-down buggy, and then my granddad bought a span of mules and said he needed a wagon.”

Hansen became so proficient at making wheels and wagons that his grandfather suggested he start the business.

During the last 28 years, Hansen Wheel & Wagon has made about 10,000 wooden wheels and 13,000 wagons of all kinds, from reproductions of 19th-century stagecoaches to wagons used as living quarters by sheepherders.

Hansen’s business has grown because of a renewed interest in the Old West. “People have moved from the farm to the city, but have a longing for the past,” he says. “It’s a nostalgia thing.”

To build authentic replicas, Hansen and his wife, Holly, travel to farms, museums and other places where antique wagons are used or displayed, sketching and measuring every piece of the old originals. He has dozens of notebooks with handwritten details on all kinds of Old West rolling stock, from chuck wagons to prairie schooners.

From his sketches, Hansen and his shop’s 10 craftsmen—wainwrights, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, coach makers, carpenters, pinstripe painters and upholsterers—build wagons as they were made in the 1800s, using square nails or handcrafted bolts when required.

Hansen’s shop is known for fine craftsmanship in refurbishing or making new wheels and wagons from ash, oak and hickory wood. Wagons made at the shop range in price from $9,000 to $80,000, depending on how elaborate and labor-intensive the project.

The shop’s authentic reproductions are sought around the world. Hansen has sent a replica chuck wagon to Japan and a sheep wagon to France, while Western-style wagons are favorites among cowboy wannabes in Germany.

Hansen wagons have appeared in movies, including Dances With Wolves, and in television commercials, such as the Budweiser beer wagons drawn by Clydesdale horses. Wells Fargo Bank uses a dozen Hansen-made stagecoaches for advertising and promotion, while Hansen wagons can be found on display in museums and Western-theme restaurants, and driven by participants in draft horse competitions.

Hansen’s most unusual order was for a wagon wheel 18 feet in diameter for the 2003 Warner Brothers movie Looney Tunes Back In Action.

In 2001, operators of the Booth Western Art Museum of Cartersville, Ga., asked Hansen to refurbish a historic stagecoach donated to the museum. “We wanted the coach to look old and used, but still be in very good condition,” says Seth Hopkins, the museum’s executive director. “We were thrilled with the results.”

Hansen is a perfectionist and keeps a watchful eye on the tiniest construction details. He and his craftsmen enjoy the challenge of continuing the almost lost art of wheel and wagon making, and they’re reluctant to deviate from methods used in the 1800s to make the durable horse-drawn conveyances.

“To my way of thinking,” says Hansen, “whatever we do here—whatever leaves here—we give it our best; and you can be sure that the next time we do it, we’ll do it even better.”

Visit www.hansenwheel.com or call (605) 996-8754 for more information.

Chuck Cecil is a freelance writer in Brookings, S.D.

first appeared: 12/10/2006