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Selecting timber wasn't all that Davey was to learn in his early days in McMullans workshop, however.

"The first job I was put to was making sprouting boxes for potatoes," he says, "and when I sat down at the bench the fella opposite said 'before you pick up a hammer, there's four things you need to learn.'

"The first thing was to keep my eyes open and the second to keep my mouth closed.

Third, keep my nose clean and fourth thing was to keep my socks up."

He went on... "Now, I understood what he meant by the first three but I never could figure out what socks had to do with joinery. Many years later someone told me that, in the days of the old hiring fairs, farmers looking for journeymen would inspect the socks of the men available to hire. They reckoned that if a man was particular about his appearance he would be particular about his work, so a neat pair of socks was important."

When he began to learn the craft skills involved with making wheels and carts, Davey had to become familiar with some new tools, like a 'round square' which wasn't a tradesman's joke at the expense of an apprentice but which was used to mark out where the mortises for the spokes would be cut on the elmwood nave. As well as the braces, planes and spokeshaves, wheelmaking demands the use of numerous specialist bespoke tools for maintaining a constant radius and clamping part-built wheels. Many of thos tools had to be hand-made before the real job even started.

Video Clip 2: How to use a "Round Square"...

Davey demonstrates marking the spacing for the tenon holes on the wheel's nave.

Each felloe also had to have mortises cut into its inner surface to receive two spokes and the tenons on the spokes were carefully measured to make sure that the end did not touch the inside of the outer rim. When the felloes were fitted together, a gap equal to the thickness of the iron hoop was left between each felloe. Assembling all of the pieces together required a real 'knack' and the finished wheel was tapped gently together with a mallet.

Video Clip 3: The last felloe & hoop

The iron hoop was also made in the shop so some smithying skills, as well as hard graft, were needed to complete the job. The hot iron was fitted to the wheel and as it cooled it drew the felloes neatly together, bonded with the ash and gave a hard-wearing edge to a wheel built to last.

This special brace has a cutting bit like a pencil sharpener for making spokes.

To demonstrate the longevity of a well built wheel Davey showed us an example which he made some 45 years ago. He didn't make only spoked wheels though. Some of them solid rather than spoked and were carefully cut from a single piece of wood. He explained that a solid wheel is by no means an easy option and the making of them harboured a few pitfalls.

As with the nave of a spoked wheel, where to cut had to be carefully judged so that the core (of the tree) lay in the dead centre of the wheel. There had to be complete uniformity of strength across the wood. Davey points out, however, that a solid wheel should not be cut in a perfect circle...

Video Clip 4: The six-spoked cartwheel

"If you make it a circle then, when you put the iron hoop on, it will be squeezed into an oval because the wood at the parts running alongside the grain will give way more than the parts at the ends of the grain.

"So what you have to do is cut an oval and, if you do it just right, it will be a circle after the hoop has cooled."

Odd as it might seem, not all of Davey's customers were concerned with the accuracy of his craftsmanship. In fact two particular customers didn't even care if it was round! Here he tells us an amusing tale of how two ladies approached him, very keen to buy a wheel from him... yes just one wheel!

Video Clip 5: Alternative uses.. wheels within wheels