Thursday, October 3, 2013

A Wooden Frame For A Small Parts Carousel


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[Note: Rouge River Workshop's author is and has been having a spot of mid-life crisis. Between a prolonged illness, and lay-off from employment back in May of this year, life has left a bit to be desired lately.

Anyway, I'm on the mend now, and have a great deal of catching up to do on many fronts. My blogging here is going to suffer for awhile because of that. This post is much abbreviated from what I would normally present. 'Abbreviation' is likely to be a feature of much of what little I'm able to post for the near future.]

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I brought this item over from the garage.


If you read the linked post, you'll have gotten the introduction to this brief post. What it boils down to is that I have to fabricate a wooden frame for the carousel, to substitute for the original steel frame that's gone missing. Here goes.

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The Frame

Here's a view of what I've come up with for a frame.


The carousel fits easily between the two side frame members, which raises the problem of bearings that can 'reach in' to support the carousel. Here are the bits and pieces I came up with to deal with that issue.


The threaded rod pieces are 1/2"-13, with a 5/8" deep, 5/16" diameter bore at one end -- those are my adjustable bearings that do the 'reaching in'. The rest of the stuff is to assure secure bearing retention in the frame -- the bearings mustn't be free to 'walk' out.

Here's a view of a completed bearing assembly from the outside.


Inboard, the bearing relates to the carousel like so.


So far, so good. Now I have to find a place to install the thing.

My workshop's wall space, and overhead space, are pretty much taken up with stuff already. When I find a place for the carousel, I'll be back with a photo of it. Meanwhile, at least I've got a satisfactory replacement frame to take the place of the missing one. This carousel is something I rememeber from early boyhood, so I couldn't just let it languish in the attic. It pleases me greatly to have the use of it.

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Installed -- FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2013

As promised, here's a view of the installed carousel.


That's the headstock end of my metal lathe's bench that the carousel is now attached to. All things considered, that's not a bad place for it.

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