Thread: Meatball Cart

The way the cart is positioned, there will be an outward facing side and an inward facing side that normally won't be seen. The outward side has a 6mm marine ply panel, it is a floating panel and the grooves were cut using a combination plane with a quarter inch plough blade. For the inward or non visible side, I decided to put in a bunch of dowel rods (there are 31 of them) to allow good air flow and to let the heat escape too, so it won't overheat inside the cart. The process of setting them in place, finishing them with DO and then gluing up the side, is shown in the pictures below.

I needed to address the potential heat issue, so I decided to line the inside panel with aluminium sheeting to act as a kind of heat flashing. This was also applied to the underside of the table top. The top and the base are 18mm marine ply which I finished with Organoil Burnishing Oil. The surfaces are therefore pore-filled and smooth, heat resistant (for spills) and water repellent. The top just sits there and is kept in place by the aluminium tabs, the double-tab that hooks onto the front stops the top from moving around.

I managed to get hold of a couple of 26" bicycle front wheels for the cart. These ones with the quick-release axle made it easy to fit to a couple of brackets so that took care of that. Then a quick try of fitting the cooker and a pot through the hole in the top. I put doors at each end, These were put together using floating marine ply panels again and joined with haunched tenons, fitted with butt hinges to the frame. I turned the knobs from some NGR off-cuts to suit.

So all that was left was to attach the doors and add some aluminium trim around the edge of the marine ply. Also added some rubber feet to the rear legs. The cart already had its first outing last weekend and performed well without any problems. I remove the top and the wheels to put in the back of the car, so it's quite mobile.

Ahhh ... it all made sense with the final pics. I remember those trolleys from street vendors in Asia, though they were not as pretty as yours.

Nice job. I stand in awe of those woodies who go to the trouble of making things like dovetail joints in jobs like these, but I am not a member of the club. I'd have done it with floating tenons. Still, it's nice to see people keeping alive the complete range of woodworking skills, and I have been known to cut the occasional dovetail.

Nice also to see a job so different to what is usually found here.

Hungry now......do you deliver to Mount Barker? Nice build by the way.

great project!

Originally Posted by Biggus

Hungry now......do you deliver to Mount Barker? Nice build by the way.

I suppose anything is possible! Maybe when I come down for some of the local merlots...
By the way, I think you bought the remainder of the NGR from young Daniel up in the hills? What do you think of it, B? I'd never seen anything like it, nice enough timber, totally weird grain and when I was sanding those knobs on the lathe, it was like sanding clay! But came out well enough. Have you had a chance to use any yet?

Cheers
Swifty

Originally Posted by Swifty

I suppose anything is possible! Maybe when I come down for some of the local merlots...
By the way, I think you bought the remainder of the NGR from young Daniel up in the hills? What do you think of it, B? I'd never seen anything like it, nice enough timber, totally weird grain and when I was sanding those knobs on the lathe, it was like sanding clay! But came out well enough. Have you had a chance to use any yet?

Cheers
Swifty

I only bought a couple of hundred dollars worth of it to have a play with. About half of it went into this----> Bedside table in New Guinea Rosewood

Interesting stuff, I found it quite prone to tear out but it's pretty, not spectacular but looks good in an understated way. I though it had to be worked carefully and was quite easy to damage inadvertently. How does it hold up in the workbench?

Haven't worked out what to do with the rest yet, just letting it sit there until the light bulb goes on in my head.

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Awesome

Awesome build. I'm so glad you took the reflectors off the wheels. Also if you don't mind me asking, how many meatballs do you charge for a job like this?

SWMBO now wants me to complete the cart by putting a cover on it, which is the way all the traditional ones are made.
I still have a bit of the NG Rosewood on hand, but not enough so I will dig into some blackwood offcuts, plus I have a beautiful piece of Vic Ash that comes from the old built-in wardrobe in our house, that was replaced in 2005. I never throw out hardwood, for just this reason!
So first to mill and dress the timber, in this case ripped on my table saw and tidied up on the bench with my No.5. The uprights will be connected to the lower plates with bridle joints, you can see one example shown in the pictures. The uprights sit on the handles at one end of the cart, and I turned the bottoms of the other two to fit into 1" holes drilled through the cart table, at the other end.
Oh, and there's a picture of the cart in action. I can tell you it tasted delicious.

Originally Posted by Swifty

Meatball Cart

SWMBO had an unusual request, which was to make a traditional-style meatball cart or "gerobak baso" as found throughout Indonesia. ...

I googled gerobak bakso and got 1.4 million hits. Your design and execution is so understated.

So on the weekend I was able to finish the joinery for the roof. All up there are 15 components. The pictures show how these fit together. From the top to bottom in the first picture are the four posts, then the four rafters fitted with birds mouth joints the fit into the beams and on top of the ridge board. The next piece is the ridge board itself (the recycled Vic Ash I mentioned) and you can see the half-bridles at each end that fit into the king posts. The ridge board will protrude past the rafters by 4" on each end. Below the ridge board are the two "wall plates" they would be called, but there is no wall, and these have the tenons that fit into the bridle joints on the posts. Then at the bottom are the two beams, that have tenoned birds mouth joints to receive the bottom of the rafters, also half-laps the fit onto the ends of the wall plates, and half blind dovetail recesses to receive the king posts. The king posts themselves you can see sitting on the beams, with dovetails at the one end and bridles at the top to receive the ridge board. So that is a complete description of the joinery. The remaining pictures show some of the joints individually and then the whole thing put together. I hope I got the terminology right for the components, I am not a roofing expert! I will try and get it finished next weekend.Slide11.JPGSlide12.JPGSlide13.JPG