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| Initial Paddle Design |
Time to stop putzin around, and start building something. The last we left this party, the plan was to build the individual paddles and mount them onto the hub/axle/bearing assembly one at a time. This is still the plan. I may regret it later, but for now, its the plan.
When I temporarily mounted the hub/spokes/siderails on the axle, I was measuring the necessary clearance between the inside spokes and the house decking. The inside spoke ends to be at least 2 1/2 inches in from the inner bearing, and the the width of the waterwheel needs to be no more than 14 inches.
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| Shopsmith with Dado Blades |
The design of the paddles calls for a small water box to be built at the end of the spokes. I’m using 1 x 8 and 1 x 12 cedar for this purpose. I also plan to route out parts of the spokes for the box, making what’s called a dado joint for the inside edge of the box, and a "rabbet" joint for the bottom piece. I fired up the Shopsmith and configured it for the dado blades, and made the two cuts on each of the spokes.
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| First Paddle Nearly Complete |
The assembly of the paddles took a little tweaking to get the joints as square and as tight as possible. The joints were glued, tacked together with a brad nailer, and then screwed together. I added some caulking around the inside of the box for water tightness.
Before building the remaining paddles, maybe it would be a good thing to mount one onto the hubs just to make sure everything fits and has the proper clearance.
Looks good so far.
Next: Build the remaining seven paddles, same as the first, paint them, and install them onto the hubs.
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| Five little paddles sitting' in a row |
A Project update:
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