Next Step on the Carousel - Main Supports - Lining for Electrical Opening - Part 34

 I am reposting the picture of the carousel from last week because some readers may have missed it because the blog post was late.  Somehow, I managed to not hit the publish button.  I did not notice it until I signed on the blog on Thursday.  There are also more pictures after that to show what I have been working on this week.

I had just finished running my first test of the carousel with all the animals on it.  The test was to make sure the animals would all go up and down as planned and stay on the track.  It passed.  Nothing is screwed down or glued on yet, so things look a little out of kilter after the test.  Scroll back for the previous post for more details or folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com  

Now, on with the next steps that I worked on this week.

I began the paper mâché work on the oatmeal box that is the center support.  I removed the top and bottom from the oatmeal box and covered it with two layers of masking tape.

Yesterday I added the first layer of paper mâché to it.  Even using longer strips of newspaper, it took better than an hour to get it covered inside and out.  I will be putting on more layers, but it may take me a couple of weeks to get this part completed.

Once the cylinder has all of its layers of paper mâché, it will be painted and decorated.  I will be blogging more about that later.

Although the cylinder is strong enough to hold up the top platform on its own, this is not actually the main support for the carousel.  It is only decorative.  The central support column will be something else, but I will blog more on that later when I install it.

This is the underside of the bottom platform of the carousel.  I had my husband drill a hole through the platform so I could run the electrical cord for the rotating platform that turn the other two platforms. The plywood is pretty rough, and I was concerned that in time it might damage the insulation on the wiring.  I used some wool felt and lined the hole top and bottom.

I lined the top of the platform in the same way, then added an extra round piece of felt on top of that.  When I run the cord through it, I will probably cover that section of the cord with some electrical tape.

The platform in the center is where the rotating platform will sit.  Regular readers may remember from a previous post that my rotating platform was about a half an inch (1.27 cm) shorter than the humps that make the animals go up and down.  Adding the platform was my fix for that problem.

This is about all that happened this week.  Check back on Monday or Tuesday for the next post.