Cumberland, BC
Been reading and watching all you guys build your own rotisseries, but I dreaded the thought of having to go get a bunch of black-iron pipe to put it all together; I live in a rural part of Vancouver Island, and I knew that chasing down all the parts for that was either going to send me to too many places to find all the bits, or I'd end up having to drive a few hours to find one or more of the pieces.
Then, I ran across this thread over on Pinball Info, by newdos:
http://www.pinballinfo.com/community/threads/simple-and-quick-rotisserie.13441/
So bloody simple, I knew I had half the materials already, and could likely get the rest in one stop at Home Depot. I know... Home Depot isn't my favourite place to go for parts/supplies either, but if they had it all then that'd save me a few hours of running around town or driving down to Nanaimo to find bits.
Turns out, HD did have everything I needed. Gotcha was, though, that you can't search for it on their website. They carry "slotted angle iron", but if you search for that on their website you sure as heck won't find it. I only found out they had it because I went back to Google "slotted angle iron" and homedepot.ca was one of the first results it came back with. Go figure.
Short-list of materials went like this...
- 1x 1 1/2" x 48" Slotted Angle Iron
- 2x 5/16" Carriage Bolt
- 4x 3/8" Flat Washer
- 4x 5/16" Fender Washer
- 4x 5/16" Hex Nut
- 2x 5/16" Nylon Insert Lock Nut
Wood-wise, it was just some 2"x2" and 2"x4" that I already had in the shop.
Cut the Slotted Angle iron right in half at the 24" mark, and you'll now have matching pieces for each side. The 5/16" carriage bolts fit perfectly inside the slotted hole you'll now find at the mid-point of each of those 24" pieces, and once you add the 3/8" flat washers and tighten on a hex nut, they're not going to move or rotate at all.
Vertical supports are 2"x2", 16" in height, and the bases are 2"x4", 16" in length. I put 12" of 2"x4" cross-pieces on either end, and the angle braces are made out of 2"x2" and are 8" long (on their long sides). Wood is all glued and screwed together.
To cut the slots in the 2"x4" bases, I found the center point, then used the 2"x2"s to help mark out the area to cut. I then cranked up the height on our radial arm saw, and it made short work of those sections. Forget the idea of chiseling that out; just keep sliding the base over a tiny bit at a time and keep slicing away with the radial arm saw. Easy peasy.
Took me more time to drive over to HD and grab the parts than it did to put it together; took me less than an hour to cut and assemble everything. Isn't the prettiest, but its small enough that it'll fit on my workbench when needed, and will tuck away out of site when its not.
