Wheelings

I got the huge wheel made and attached the casters today. This is the start of the operation, jig sawing four semicircles from the plywood, I have my left arm under the corner offcut to stop it dropping off prematurely. The sheets had little bits missing where they had been cut as a sub floor to fit around pillars and whatnot, so the final circle is a bit under sized at around five foot in diameter. I laid the pieces out on top of each other to have two circles like a layer cake with the semicircle joints perpendicular and screwed the four bits together to make a huge wheel. I don't know if you have ever messed about with wheels nearly as tall as yourself, but it does give a hint as to how they became so popular. You can imagine the first chappies wanting to stick wheels on everything. With a few other folk on hand it would be easy to move huge weights by attaching wheel segments to square blocks or whatever. Obviously entangled light and quantum mechanics make these discoveries seem rather simplistic, but it is fun to watch archeaologists talk nonsense about how hard it would be for people to build huge structures without modern machinery, it would just take longer and with no TV or blogging to do my ancient relatives were probably glad of the distraction from counting the hairs on their toes. Anyway, my wheel soon got laid down flat on its swivel casters and now I must decide on how to make the shelves and stuff on it and add some kind of axle to hold it in its place on the floor. I think it will work out OK, but it could just be a huge folly. Anyway, I had to shift all the wood out of the corner to lay the thing in position so the shop is now filled with all that and I must decide quickly to get it all tidied away. It will be great if it all fits on the turntable shelf device, fighting for space in the constant build up of offcuts and potentially useful timber is one of my main battles.
Unfortunately even making these circles I ended up with 8 weird curvy shapes left over from the corners that I will now have to find a use for, shelves for a tight corner or backing battens for a domed roof perhaps, I certainly won't be able to throw them away.