Wilson, Wilson-Pilcher or ???

[PAV8427]

Good morning all. New guy here. 
I have always been interested in anything power by gas or alchohol (or deisel, kerosene, steam etc. etc) and designed to go over the speed limit. Seems the older I get, the farther back in time I look. Hense the reason I have been lurkin around here. 
I have always loved a good story. From that 'old Chevy'(Vette) tucked away for how ever long to I found this in Grandpas stash and what is it??

That brings us to the thread title. 
My wife and I found these this weekend. The only anything around that is pre 1940.
I have no idea if they are really a Wilson or Wilson-Pilcher item other that the 'Wilson'

that is written on one of them. 
They are 24" x 2 1/2. What looks like 4 7/8 bolt pattern. With a 2 1/4 ID and 6" OD hub diameters. 
What searching I have done they 'look' like pics of either(sameish spoke count and pin striping), but nothing absolute. 
What are the chances?

What kind of a story could they tell?

If so. How in the heck did they get from New York or England all the way to central Minnesota??

 

Thank you. 
Doug

[1912Staver]

I would guess that Wilson is a previous owners name.  They look to be from a smaller car , about 1906 - 1914.  Could have any one of 100 or more makes.

[wayne sheldon]

A very common type of wheel, used from about 1902 until even 1927 as the lower cost option on model T Fords (these are however likely no later than 1920 due to the way the wooden felloe is trimmed).

They are called "clincher" rims because of the rolled-inward bead of the rim that the "clincher" tire's bead tucked under to "clinch' the tire and hold it onto the rim. They were high pressure tires, requiring about 60 to 75 psi pressure inside to keep the tire from slipping on the rim as the car was driven. In addition, these are non-demountable wheels. The rim itself is a part of the wheel. No mounted and aired up spare tire on a spare rim to change if one had a flat. 

Hundreds of makes of cars used this type wheel for a number of years, most moving to demountable rims (some were still clinchers!) by about 1914. Also about the mid 1910s, wire beaded tires were developed and became "straight side" using various other techniques to hold and/or remove the tire from the rim. Early straight side tires also required high pressure to properly seat on the rim. Both straight side and clincher styles were common on smaller cars until the mid 1920s. Larger and more expensive cars were mostly using straight side by 1920. The straight side tires and rims were somewhat more expensive to manufacture.

The wheel you show looks very much like the typical Ford wheel used from about 1913 through 1917, and on some cars showing up as late as 1920. There were however numerous other car companies (including Chevrolet and Overland) that used almost identical wheels except for the hub which was different (and in this case, missing). The color would NOT be Ford, but may have been repainted at some point.

The felloe is the part between the steel rim and the wooden spokes. Felloes were made out of wood for many wheels, but also out of steel for many others. "Felloe" is an old word, not found in many modern resources, and can also be said or spelled as "felley", or "felly", or a couple other ancient ways.

 

If you look closely at your top photo. Just slightly to your right of top center, is a "join" with a "join plate" held to the steel rim by two long rivets through the wood felley. Look very closely at that join plate. It likely will have a single raised letter stamped into it. There were a lot of companies that provided wheels for a lot of different automobile manufacturers. Many wheels may have been used on numerous different makes of cars, with just a simple change of the hub. Ford built so many cars, and wanted standardization so that the wheels could be interchangeable. So some wheel manufacturers stamped their initial into the join plate as a way of identifying their wheels.

[PAV8427]

Figured they probably werent Wilson related. That would have been a cool story though.
A good day is when you learn something new about something old. 
Just have to retain it now. 
No stamps that I can see. But will look at those more often. Would there be a list out there a guy can use for reference on later rims?

Thanks. 
Doug

[Rusty_OToole]

The paint may be original, a close inspection should tell if they were repainted. What early low priced car was painted red with yellow or cream pinstripe? Could be a clue.