Waaay back when I was a teenager working my way through high school, my job was at a Joe Lake's Tire Center in Monroe MI. We had contracts with several of the large paper companies in town, picking up their trucks and trailers, and changing out tires on those big rigs. Most of them were either split rim or split ring. Both could be very dangerous, you couldn't let down your guard even once. Always made sure the split rim was put together right and the nubs not worn down, and any wheels with split rings were always tapped in with a small sledge hammer. No tire cages at that time (early 1960's). When it came time to air them up for the first time, we used plenty of rim lube and we learned how to hook the air chuck onto the metal valve stems so we could walk away from the tire as it was being inflated. No valve core in the valve stem on the first air-up. The shop air compressor was set at 125 psi, so it really couldn't be overpressurized too much. When some of those tire beads popped up, they sounded like a shotgun going off. We could shake the hose then to remove it from the stem, letting the air pressure escape from the tire. When it got down to about 60-80 lbs, we would walk back up to the tire, make sure both beads had seated, then screw in the valve core. Every once in a while we'd loose control of a core and shoot it across the shop.
Never had one rim come apart or one ring come off. If OSHA would see that today, they would go nuts.
