First, a little music to set the mood. How about a little Dead or Alive?
You Spin Me Round
You can thank me later for the ear-worm.
Like I mentioned in the opener, if you have been doing bonsai for a while, you know that a turn table is a valuable piece of equipment when styling your trees. I have had a few throughout the years and none of them lasted. I wanted one that could stay outside all of the time, without ruining, and could handle what ever you could lift and set on it, so I came up with this:
Here it is broken down.
I have a friend who owns an industrial construction company and I got two stainless steel threaded flanges from their used parts pile and a couple of stainless nipples from Lowe's. You just have to pick two nipples that will slide into each other. I think mine are 2 inch and 1 3/4 inch, then choose your flanges accordingly. I took it a couple of steps further, after I mounted it to the bench, I marked it and used a hole saw to cut a hole in the bench top for the top's nipple to pass through. Now I can install a longer piece of pipe to add a raise/lower feature to it. I then drilled a hole through the bases nipple and welded a nut to it. Added the same size bolt as the nut, and now I can lock the top into position.
The top is just marine treated plywood. I can put the heaviest tree that I have on there and it handles it with no problems. The pipe has just enough friction to keep the top from rotating while you are using it, but not too much to make it hard to turn.
Here are some more construction photos to show how I put it together in case you want to follow along.
There it is, for better or worse, I hope you found it worth the read.
Now Go Spin Something!
Now Go Spin Something!