Totem Pole Carousel

[Brian Weaver]

Our local woodturning club wanted to have a totem pole of turnings that we could display at our demonstrations. We decided to make it a challenge for our meeting this coming Saturday. You could either turn your section by yourself or join up with other turners to make a piece. I built this myself other than the tractor which my dad made. It's 15" wide and 12" tall with 182 pieces. The woods used are Maple, Birch, Oak, Redwood, Walnut, Cherry, Ash, Myrtle, Briar and some MDF. The club has a 1 3/8" pole mounted to a metal base that we will stack the pieces on with the pole going up through the center. Because it's always good to have an edge in a gun fight I wanted the main piece to rotate, and because it would have a pole going through the center I had to come up with a unique way to do this. The first pic shows the inner workings that sits inside the bottom "bowl" (this was an early on pic but it does have a hole in the center of it now so the pole can go through). The "plate" that sits on top of this has a track turned in it that sits on the drive wheels. Because I also have a full time job this has taken me 3 months to complete. I have also included a link to a youtube video so you can see it work. It's not really as noisey as it sounds in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS4fM46DSDg

[Brian Weaver]

Gaaah! Not sure why the pics didn't come through I will try again!


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[Bill Bolen]

Functional art! Very cool and very well done..

[David E Keller]

That's pretty neat. It will be a great addition to the totem.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Pretty cool idea Brian! Nice work on the carousel and everything in it! Should prove to be a big hit when on display!

[Jim Underwood]

Awesome!

What do you use for bearings?

[Bernie Weishapl]

That is just to cool. Jim beat me to it as I was going to ask about bearings.

[brian watts]

that pretty sweet.....first one i seen of that...

[kenneth walker]

Wow very cool great job.

Ken.

[Thom Sturgill]

Way cool. A crowd puller I'm sure.

[Brian Weaver]

Thanks everyone, the bearings I use come from VCR's. Inside them there is a pickup head (thats what I call it anyway). I take the head apart and use the head itself for a tenon on pieces that I am going to remount over and over like sanding disks or wood face plates. They are just under 2 1/2 inches so they fit the chuck quite well and they never crush. They also have a couple of nice little bearings in them that I use for things like this.