Here is the finished Wheel of Austen currently on stage at Improvboston. I was asked by John Herman to build this wacky thing (thanks for having faith in me ) . I ended up building this in a day (9am to 1am Long day ). Solid wood construction, nicely sanded and painted. Complete with clacking sound for the pegs.
Now while I'm pretty proud of this nutty build it actually started off as one big fat fail on my part. I'll get to that later in another post but for now here is the construction of the Wheel of Austen.
I give credit to this link with a big thanks to Ehow for pulling my butt out of the fire
Making my circle
Cutting out the Wheel. Very happy with my saw, that blade really cuts like a lightsaber.
Pie slices ( I did fine but I should have probably gone with the instructions)
Sanding the wheel, top back and edges...
Drilling the hole for the dowels. I actually am wearing goggles and a mask for the construction. I removed them for the photo. Safety first!!
Primed and painted
Putting in the dowels. Glued then hammered into the wood. They are not going anywhere.
Working on the base. I used a nice heavy base with mounted with a metal bracket screwed (about 12 screws) into the wood and the post. I later added some nice wood scroll brackets, more for decoration than for support. Painted it all white to give it a nice wholesome clean look.
Putting everything together finally!! Still more work to do.
We need letters now. That is where my lovely and awesome wife (and muse) came in she found the font and tweeked it for our needs and printed it all out. We spend the rest of the nice cutting tiny letters and decoupaging them to the wheel.
Letters are done at long last and my vision is getting really blurry by this time (1am )and I can feel the burn on my head from being outside all day. Hey I was on a roll so you don't stop for anything except for 10 minute breaks to keep your brain from shorting out.
THE WHEEL OF AUSTEN!!!
VIDEO OF THE FIRST TEST SPIN
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