Restoring an old Woodley’s treadle wheel

My partner and I rescued an old Woodley’s – Leach design – treadle wheel from a desolated farm house and shed near Kenmare. The potter who sold it to me said, he loves hand-building and never really got into throwing.

The wheel had been in storage for about six years and was in parts when we picked it up. The wood is in perfect condition, even the paint is hardly worn off, except on the treadle and the structural timber where the potter’s feet rest. We needed a couple of G-clamps to reassembled the frame, it was easily done. Unfortunately the layered chipboard of the fly wheel has a few cracks, has slightly expanded and gets stuck under the lower part of the wooden frame while turning. We will try and glue it together, once it is properly dried out.

We contacted Woodley’s joinery in the UK and found out, that this wheel had been built in the mid/late sixties, the tray is made of zinc and the frame made with Sapele – an African hardwood.

I’ve been following Simon Leach’s YouTube channel for years, he uses this same type of wheel that his grandfather Bernhard Leach designed in the late 1940s. Ever since I learned throwing, I planned to buy a treadle wheel. This old Woodley’s wheel was a lucky find indeed!

If you’re living in the US, you can buy a Leach design treadle wheel directly from Simon Leach or you can buy the wheel plans as PDF from his website http://simonleachpottery.com/gallery.html and build one yourself or have it built by your local joiner.

If you’re living in the UK, you can buy the Leach design potter’s wheel from Woodley’s joinery, who are still building them today https://www.woodleysjoinery.co.uk/potters-wheel.html

But if you’re lucky like me, you might just find a second-hand one that is looking for a good home.

I’m looking forward to start practicing!