Month: August 2020

I’m back to putting wheels on things. A second wheel broke on my dust collector and I had been wanting to turn it over to replace it. But I couldn’t turn it over until I emptied it. The dust had risen to the window, so it was time. You can see that this is a serious filter; 5 microns! I have no idea what that means in terms of sawdust, but I can tell you that what goes in doesn’t come back out… until you have to empty it. Then it gets all over the room. So I couldn’t fix the wheel until I cleaned the floor. I got out the shop vac, and checked to see that there was a filter in it. Uh oh. First I cleaned the filter.

Next step: get the old wheel off. The wheel on the bottom is the original, and it’s broken. The two wheels on top are the ones I stuck into a block of wood, then onto the axle.

I cut a 2×4 to fit the width of the carriage. I notched it to go around the motor mount bolts. But I couldn’t drill holes until I repaired the end cap on the vice handle on the Sarcophagus! I hadn’t lost the piece while vacuuming the side effects of the dust removal. If the end cap has lasted this long, it can carry on for a few more years.

Same old wheels, new wood. Good thing I saved all those wheels and boards.

The dust collector now has four good wheels, and, by the way, I’ll be giving my Foredom grinder to my brother, who doesn’t want its brilliant rolling stand made of a desk chair, shovel handle, and curtain rod hooks! So I’ll just hold onto it, because I may just want to put something else on wheels.

You can never have too many casters in storage. You’ll need them later. The good kind have metal plates to be bolted to furniture, but leftovers pulled out of office chairs and microwave tables will do in a pinch. For instance, here’s an old repair of the platform that holds my dust collector. A plastic wheel broke. The second one is cracked, and this project will be revisited.

Given lots of time at home, I put Mom’s old blindstitch machine table on wheels:

Oh, the joy of those wheels! The plastic will probably shatter in a few years, but so far, it’s a dream! The table rolls easily despite the weight of that solid maple top and steel legs. So, why not put wheels on other things?

This log is now a footstool. It’s not as effective; it wants to tip over, and may need to be mounted on a base. But if the whole thing fails, I’ll burn the log and keep the wheels.

Mom found this fine piece of Ashley furniture on a curb. Now it has wheels, and can live under a desk and hold up a scanner. And the sky’s the limit; I have more wheels!