Bill getting ready to weld a part of the Ferris wheel

September is here and we are still working on the structure. It was so unrealistic to think it could be finished by now. The main strategy I’m following is making sure I have stuff for the Youth Council to do when they come.

One of the biggest tasks with the most unknowns is building the structure for the Ferris wheel. It is going to be metal except for the cars, they are out of plywood. So Bill has to do lots of welding. He took a shop class in high school and did a really nice job with the spot welder. We are borrowing a wire welder from one of the other candy window artist and Bill is getting the hang of that. He has run into a few hurdles and has found ways over or around some of them. One was how to hold the short metal bars in at a right angle to the washers that he wants to weld them to. The washers will be attached to the cars and the metal rods will connect to the Ferris wheel. Last week he learned about an inexpensive jig with magnets that is perfect for what he needs to do. Yeah! So today he worked getting all 12 of those welds done.

finished parts

I worked on prepping the plywood for the car pattern. I’m hoping we can use their band saw tomorrow to cut them out when we return the welder. We can only use the welder on weekends when their shop is closed. Bill helped me by cutting the 4’x8′ sheet of plywood into 16″x12″ pieces. We then screwed 6 of those together and spray mounted the paper patterns on top. We the table saw we cut all four sets of straight pieces and trimmed of the straight edges on the back and the side pieces. Yeah for progress.

Bill is still trying to figure out how to get the threads cut in the ends of some of the metal rods. He isn’t sure if the problem is too cheap of dies that her purchased to cut the threads or if it is something else.

The South Jordan Youth Council kids will be coming on Wednesday and Saturday this week. We have 3 more polycarbonate trees to assemble and lots of candy to put on those. Getting wholes punched in the green gels to line the trees is a big pain. But I haven’t come up with a better way to do it. It doesn’t look like I have enough mini green gummy bears for the trees. I have to decide if I want to use a variety of green candy for the trees or if I should get another case of mini gummy bears. The ones I have are left over from last year. Also the gummy gumdrops I got for the lights aren’t going to be enough. I need to get more or pick another kind of candy to add to it.

I think I could have the kids paint the seats on Wednesday if they are cut out. It should work to paint them first and then assemble them. Not sure if my drilling and screwing skills are good enough to get them together in the really square fashion that they need to be for them not to cause problems when the Ferris wheel turns.