| WIRE SPOOL |
| Click on any pic to get a larger view: |
| Bean Inc. Copyright 2001. |
| This is a project I put off for a while, but I'm glad that now I've finally gotten around to building it. It's a standard army wire spool, that was used by engineers and Signal Corps troops for comunications and demolitions uses . What finally motivated me to make it was seeing a real one in person, and being able to get the propper dimensions and details correct. The bottom right photo is a view of the real spool I based this off of. Details include a working crank, folding handles, and about 100 scale feet of "wire" that you can reel out. The wire is actually super heavy duty thread that matches the real thing pretty closely. The spool can be seen in action in the Telephone Lineman scene from the Diorama section. |
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| The lower unpainted photos show what materials I used. As you can see most of the parts look to be styrene plastic with the inner cyclinder being a wood dowel. However, the side disks are actually a slightly more rubberized plastic (maybe ABS?) that I found from the tops of two juice bottles which I cut down to size. Using these pieces gave the disks the propper lip around the edge that was needed. The other shapes (such as the reinforcing ribs) are small pieces of the styrene glued to the sides. Next, the handles are bent wire which at the pivot are bent around two brass gromets. There are then a few pieces of brass and stell tubes that pass through the gromets for the axel. This allows the handles to fold. Finally, the crank is actually the crank off of one of those tiny toy bikes modified to the right shape. I took off the old pedal and added a handle which I carved out of plastic. |
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