Wood gear machine for crushing aluminum cans

Steve Garrison has come up with several innovative ways to cut gears from wood. His technique allows you to use various tools including a router, scroll saw, and table saw. In addition to making standard spur gears, his method allows you to cut helical and herringbone gears from wood. It is wooden herringbone gears that allows this ferocious wood machine to crush cans with ease.

From the YouTube description:

A reduction gear train made of pine plywood sheathing scraps laminated together with screws and powered by a 3/4 h.p. electric motor. Herringbone or Chevron gears are stronger than spur gears and do not have any tendency to move along the axle even under heavy loads. There are no bearings other than the center hole drilled through the plywood turning on half inch diameter smooth steel shafts lubricated with axle grease. The gear ratio is 72:1 not including the belt drive, the belt drive makes the overall ratio around 172:1 (About 10 rpm output with a 1720 rpm input from the motor).

This is an impressive display of power. Garrison's method can also be used to make gears for lighter duty jobs -- like the power train on Dave Johnson's Buckyball Moving Machine.

Visit Steve Garrison's web site to see videos and examples of his wood gear cutting technique. It is available as a 52-page e-book in PDF format.

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How to make a super accurate vernier protractor

Check out this cool DIY article by Steve Garrison on how to make a protractor accurate up to 0.1 degree.

How it Works (from Steve's site):

Since this protractor uses a bubble level it can only measure vertical angles. The bubble is zeroed up on a reference surface by rotating the disc that the vial is attached to until the bubble is aligned with a mark and the front wing-nut is locked down. Then the protractor is placed on a tilted surface and the larger disc is unlocked (using the wingnut on the back) and the disc is rotated until the bubble is again aligned in the same position, then the rear wingnut is locked back down. The angle is read to a degree where the long line on the left side of the vernier points to the degree scale - read the smaller number. The angle is then read to a tenth of a degree by seeing which of the vernier lines matches up best end-to-end with the degree markings and added to the degree measurement. The markings on the vernier are 0.9 degree apart.

Here is the link with details on how to make your own compact protractor accurate up to 0.1 degree.

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