Recycled Wheelchair
It has been a long absence from blogging. To explain would take a box of tissues and a patient listener. …suffice to say, I lost my workshop, but am now close to finding it again.
A workbench on castors suffers from lack of mobility when small diameter wheels bump into chunks of stuff on the floor. Large wheels would solve this problem. But fulfilment of this idea had been frustrated for years by lack of resources. For the sake of affordability, my head had meandered around pieces of old bicycle.
Treasure arrived in the form a discarded wheelchair. Timber is rarely a problem. People are always throwing away wooden objects that can be recycled. In this case, the box section is made from 25mm ply that used to be a shop display unit. The frame work is recycled slats from a double bed.
Costs involved were time and various screws. In other words, negligible. My tinker’s cart is a happy conclusion to an idea struggling for attention.
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| The final object was 1000mm long, 600mm wide and 850mm high. my preference is to work at about 920mm high but the prototyping nature of this work doesn’t demand too much attention to precision. On finishing, it screamed out for a retractable handle. Patched on as an afterthought, it looks a bit messy. I think a final design should integrate the handle into the top. |
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| Every bench needs a vice; this light weight piece was gathering dust. It came from a previous and failed project. |
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| Making little cabinet doors and a wooden catch was self indulgent fun. It may look like it doesn’t hold much but it already contains happy memories of recycling some discarded junk. |