Today I have pictures of the wooden support in the center of the carousel. As many of my long-time readers know, my husband has been helping me with cutting the wooden pieces. This project would never have gotten off the ground if it was not for his help in cutting the wood and giving me some technical advice. Thankfully, he is able to translate my description of what I want into something that will work. Once again, his timely advice saved the day. More on that below.
The blog may look a little choppy today. I have more pictures to show than text. I used to be able to place the pictures where I wanted them, but something has changed and I have not had time to figure out why I cannot move the pictures around like I used to do it.
inside the paper mâché column. It has been screwed into the platform which the animals will be on. This is two 2x4 pieces screwed together. The corners of the blocks have been cut down to allow it to sit inside the column.
Technically, the paper mâché column is strong enough on its own to support the weight of the top platform of the carousel. The wooden central column has more to do with making sure that the platforms will turn in tandem. The poles that the animals are on must stay straight up and down. If the ceiling platform should get out of sync with the floor platform, it could
cause the wooden poles to break.
This photo shows the wooden column from the top down so you can see how the corners have been shaved to fit it into the paper mâché column. It is slightly narrower than the external cylinder.
The next photo shows the underside of the floor platform. It has already been painted. Four screws have been drilled through the platform and into the block of wood shown in the picture above.
The screws are counter-sunk into the wood. This platform will be mounted to the rotating platform, and I did not want the heads of the screws to be causing a problem.
I will be blogging more on how I mount this platform to the rotating mechanism in a future post.
This side was chosen to be the underside because of the blemishes in the wood. Once everything is put together this will be completely hidden.
The last photo, shown below, shows the paper mâché column sitting over the wooden support. You can see that the wooden column tops the paper mâché column by about a quarter inch (6.35 mm). I had thought that it should be even with the top of the column, but my husband said no on that. He reminded me that wood shrinks and swells and that had to be accounted for in the planning. Right now, we are in summer and there is a lot of heat and humidity so the wood is in its swollen stage, so it is a little higher than it might be in winter.
All in all, it is probably a good thing that it is a little higher. the wooden piece is level. The paper mâché column is somewhat (mildly) off level. I may need to add some shims here and there.
My husband suggested that I figure out some way to add trim to cover up that small gap. I have not totally figured that out yet, but I am not worried about it. I just look at as a new layer of embellishment to be added to the carousel. Where there is a will, there is a way.
The paper mâché column has been glued to the floor layer. I will be painting it in place. The top platform will be resting on the column and screwed into the wood as the bottom platform was. The top of the paper mâché column will not be glued to the top platform. It will only be held in by screws. That way, if I need to take the carousel apart for any reason, the top platform can be lifted off easily.
That is it for today's blog post. Check back next Monday or Tuesday for the next update.
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