This week I did not have a lot of time to work on the project, but I have started to glue pieces together. Things are starting to move quickly on this project.
These pieces are the dowels that will hold the animals and the wooden knobs that will drive over the bumps that will make the animal go up and down. The drilling was not perfectly sized, and I had to use a rasp on each one to get the final fit. I also found that the dowels are not exactly symmetrical also.
The dowels will be set aside until it is time to mount the animals on them. It is another one of those "which came first the chicken or the egg moments." I would like to go ahead and paint them while they do not have the animals mounted on them, but I have to glue the animals to the pole because the glue will not hold as well on paint. As one person on the internet had explained in a video I watched years ago, "the hold of the glue would only be as strong as the hold of the last coat of paint." His advice was spot on and although I no longer remember who that was, I would like to thank him for that piece of sage advice.
I am not sure I have mentioned the size of these round platforms recently. Each of the plywood platforms is eighteen inches (45.72 centimeters) in diameter and one half inch (12.5 mm) thick.
The round, flat wheel shapes have been glued onto the second layer of plywood. This layer is where the animals will be placed. They have been drilled out to slightly larger than the dowels (pictured above) because they are guides to help hold them straight up and down. The dowels need to be able to move freely with no friction. The dowels will be inserted upwards from below the platform and the knobs on the ends will rest on the bumps that make the animals go up and down.
I might have preferred some differently shaped pieces here, but I wanted to use what I could find at the local craft store rather than trekking into the city to find better pieces at a wood working store.
This photo shows the third platform which forms the roof. The dowels with knobs will come up from beneath the roof and poke through the holes in the knobs. Once again, the knobs will help guide the dowel to keep going straight up and down. I had actually thought that this might be a set of the wooden wheels would be underneath these knobs to make a more decorative look on this section, but I think that it made for a better glue joint without them. The wheels are not flat on both sides. One side has a small indentation in it leaving just a couple of thin areas that make for a very small gluing area.
At this point the dowels have not been cut to their final length. I have not yet decided whether I want the dowels to be flush with the top of the knobs or whether I want to have them extend slightly higher than the knobs to show how the mechanism works.
The main thing is that the dowels need to come up into the knob to reinforce the dowel being plumb. The rotating platform will drag the knobs on the dowels over the bumps, and the friction is going to cause the knobs to slightly lag behind the platform. The reinforced areas will help keep the drag to a minimum. (See previous blog posts for a photo of the bottom platform with the bumps attached.)
I gave the glue twenty-four hours to dry before dry fitting the platforms together (along with the oatmeal box that is a stand in for the central column) and gave it a test to make sure that everything was lined up. The knobs on the dowels fit across the bumps and everything stayed in line. The knobs went up and down as hoped. I was ecstatic! I can hardly wait to see what this looks like with the four other animals attached.
This photo is the same from last week. I did not take another after the test. The animals have not yet been mounted onto the dowels.
Once again, many thanks to my husband who did the sawing and drilling and helped out with technical advice. This project is much the better for his input and encouragement.
Check back next Monday or Tuesday for the next blog post.
This week I did not have a lot of time to work on the project, but I have started to glue pieces together. Things are starting to move quickly on this project.
