Sun and Planet Mobile

[Big A]

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I thought I would post this for S & Gs on a Saturday night.

Our son asked me if I could make a sun and planet mobile like the one that he had seen on the internet. It was made of painted polystyrene and probably looked alright, but he thought Grandad could do it better for the grandkids by just turning a few balls out of wood. (It is just so easy to turn spheres/balls, isn’t it? You just remove the wood that does not look like a ball!)
I turned 13, I think, and rejected 2 of them because they were not spherical after I parted them off – funny how a shape can change after it comes off the lathe.

The big one, the sun, is Silky Oak and except for Saturn, the rest are Mango, Meranti, Sally Wattle, Ironbark, Jaca and I think Spotted Gum.
Saturn is laminated Marine Ply from the Bunnings tree, with a pine core. It is a little known fact that Saturn is a bit flat at the “North” Pole. I only found this out when Saturn decided to try to orbit around the shed as I was trimming the “South” Pole. Some of the Marine Ply delaminated – something I should have thought of but didn’t. All good while it was supported by the tail stock, but the load was too great for it a few laminates in from the sacrificial bit at the chuck.

Finished with WOP gloss.

I only hung it roughly here to see how it would look, as it has to go to Brisbane for the final hanging. So the string is a bit untidy and the lengths might be adjusted in the final hang. I had to reinstate Pluto to fill a gap and get the balance right.

The armature is 6x6 mm square ally rod.

(Edited - wrong pictures)

Cheers,
Alister.

[Christos]

I like the way this has come out. Did you use some sort of jig to help with the turnings?

[Big A]

Christos,
No, I did not use a jig. I tried using a cardboard template for one of the balls, but that did not work out so well. So I just did them by the Eyeometer. I figured that near enough would be good enough for this exercise, and if it looked alright to me then it would look the same to the majority of onlookers. Also, they will be hanging up in the air, so it is not as though you could pick up a ball and examine it closely.

As I said, I had 2 "failures" that were enough out of round to look bad after I parted them off.

I did watch a video of the process (after the event), where the turner used a wood template and marked with chalk to check for high spots. This would probably work for doing a set size of ball, but I was doing random sizes, set mainly by the diameter of the stock after I had turned it cylindrical. I did find it hard to decide when enough was enough on the lathe though - I think the parallel channels of the bed of the lathe caused me some grief, by distracting my eye. (I just realised that a bit of cardboard with rings drawn on it would have fixed that problem - something that I must remember if there is a next time.)

Thanks for the comment and question, Christos and the "likes' from others.

Alister.