How Did They Do It? The Making of The Ford Model T Wheel Start to Finish An Original Film By Ford.

This is a great illustration of the main principle of mass production...take an otherwise skilled trade, wheelwrighting, and break the process down into many small operations that can be done by semiskilled labor using equipment designed specifically for the given task. All of the various operations look like they could become repetitively mind numbing, but check out the guy at 3:20. He is running two machines at once continually turning in an anti clockwise circle. At the end of the day, I wouldn't be surprised if he was still turning circles when he walked home from the plant. But, he was making a better than average living wage for the time. Thanks for posting this.

Isn't it amazing how ingenious the folks were that designed and built all those machines ?? 🤯🤯🇺🇸🇺🇸🔥

My brother turned a full set of spokes for all four wheels of our family's 1926 Ford touring car. Our dad, who was a brilliant carpenter, oversaw the project; the wood was harvested from an oak we lost during hurricane Carla in 1961.

Thank you for this video. I was, until recently, a utility tree trimmer for 15 years. I watched a video of the early loggers, similar to this one. I was reminded of how much harder our grandfathers had it than we do now. It's so easy to take our lives for granted. Videos like this are a great way to gain perspective on our (relatively) plush lives we get to live today, thanks to them.

Henry was WAY ahead of the game. His innovative thinking changed the world.

So amazing to think these plants were designed and built without a single calculator or computor. A slide rule , drafting table and really smart engineers. Great content.

Absolutely mind numbing work.

In the late 70's I discovered a shop where I grew up - spelling? Weir wire wheel works. They had belt driven tools some they said from the civil war as well as similar tools in this vid. They repaired, re-made wheels for cannons to old cars. There were wooden crates and barrels filled with original fittings for the wheels some marked ford,Buick Cadillac. Was so awesome to see the operation as a whole! Thanks for the great vid!

This was filmed before OSHA was a word. God bless these hardy men. Today, we stand on their shoulders.

Back then a poor man had a horse the rich owned automobile's today its the opposite..

Henery ford didnt like wasting all the wood trimmings so with the help of a man named Edward kingsford the two started the Kingsford charcoal briquette Co.

WOW! So many steps to making one of these!

For all you young fellas out there, this is called work.

All those workers would have been born in the 1800's back in the horse & buggy days. They would have thought the model T was the most advanced thing they ever saw.

It's like something out of Fritz Lang's film Metropolis.

Boy is that work mind numbing, i doubt i would last long in that environment.

Awesome to see the Ford assembly line of the era. All of the workers were tough SOBs.

So refreshing to see such polite discussion in the comments.

What an operation just to make the wheels. And all the machines that were designed and produced to build the wheels. Very impressive.

Machines driven by belts, old school awesomeness.