Carousel-Part 26- Center Housing

The two boxes will be joined with more wood to create one rectangle.

In my last blog post I had said that I decided that the housing in the center of the carousel needed to be larger by half an inch in each direction.  This required another trip out for more supplies, so I had to work that into my schedule before I could proceed.  I had to go to the hardware store anyway, so I checked there for the 1/4 inch square wood pieces.  The hardware store had poplar pieces in that size, but not the balsa wood.

I actually liked the poplar better because it felt sturdier that the balsa. I felt that it was really what I needed to make sure the structure would support the weight of the roof.  Also, it was less than half the price I had paid for the balsa wood.  The big difference was that the poplar is harder to cut.  Not that cutting something so small was all that big of a problem. 

The rectangular structure will form the center housing for the carousel.

If the other workshop had been clear, I would have used the chop saw to cut the pieces and been done with it.  However, the work room was occupied by my husbands project and he is applying finish coats of varnish to it.  I didn't want to put any sawdust in the area.  I didn't want to take the saw outside because it looked as if it was going to pour down rain any minute.  (We have been having a lot or rain this year.  For several years we had been in a drought.  The rain is now somewhat above normal, but after so much drought it feels like an incredible amount of rain.)  I could have used the cutting blade with my Dremel tool in my studio, but it throws sawdust everywhere and I had just cleaned up from the last time I did that. I ended up cutting it with a coping saw.  That kept the sawdust to a manageable minimum.  It took a while, but I finally had the pieces cut. 

So, I finally was able to start on the housing.  Basically it will be a big rectangle two and a half inches on each side and twelve inches high.  Fortunately, small pieces of art do not have to conform to the building code.I am building the internal support in three pieces because the support beams are so thin that I felt that a middle support was necessary.  Once it is all together I'll decide if it needs further supports. 

The pictures show the first two rectangles I made.  They are glued and held together with tape at the moment.  Once the glue is dry, I'll add the extra pieces of wood that will form the third rectangle.  So now I'm just waiting for the glue to dry so I can get on with things.

Once the whole structure is in put together, I will reinforce all the joints with glue and fabric.  I'm using glue and fabric because the pieces are so small that I am worried about breaking the wood if I try to put a brad in them.  A quarter of an inch is not a whole lot of area to work with when you need to make sure that the wood will stay together.

The photo of the carousel is shown with the original sized square not the new larger size.