fork width??
 

The fork on my huffy sportsman doesnt fit any of my front hubs. Not even off by a little, but wayyyy off, probably 1cm.
Is this a normal vintage thing?

A lot of cheapy "road" bikes had around 90mm front fork spacing instead of the normal 100mm.

well its a 1960 huffy sportsman (3-speed), so its not a road bike... and i dont think it was cheap.

Oh, well in any case 90mm front spacing should be about right for that style of bike. You can try to respace the fork which might be tricky, or find a correct hub/wheel.

wierd the fork width was ~85mm. but now its all respaced
actually i think i made a better method for respacing frames/forks which is super easy
you put an axle on the fork/frame with the axle nuts on the inside then you twist them out to put pressure outwards on the fork/frame
each wrench turn is 1mm travel so you can be really accurate... i had to space it to 122mm to get it to recess back to 100mm
tada!

I've done that, too, but on rear spacing, you have to make sure you aren't just bending the dropouts, which is why Sheldon's method takes the leverage farther up.