Garden Roller
Built by Ralph Laughton in April 2011 for the 14 Parts Plus Semi-Circular Plates Only Secretary’s Challenge
This Challenge (to build a model using only 14 parts and as many of part 214 as you like, plus nuts and bolts) took some thinking about. What on earth do you do with part 214, the semi-circular plate? Although we have plenty of them they hardly ever get used and certainly not in quantity.
We thought about some kind of ball lifter with the 214s ‘nutted’ the length of a threaded rod. Then I thought of using them as some kind of counter weight, but I did not have enough scope only using 14 other parts to build anything remotely interesting.
After a lot of head scratching I came up with the model you see here. It is a garden roller. The 102 semi-circular plates are mounted on a threaded rod and kept in place by pressure applied from each end by a pair of screwed rod adapters. The frame is made from three perforated strips and two brackets and the shaft is two double bent strips fixed to the frame with two formed slotted strips. The axle rod handle is fitted to the shaft with a short screw coupling.
Total number of parts: 14 plus 102 semi-circular parts and a quantity of nuts and bolts.