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Home Made Roller Rod Wrapper |
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Written by Chris R. a/k/a PNG
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Build your own Roller Wrapper!
By Chris R a/k/a PNG
Shown here are some examples of rollers used for rotating a rod when applying/drying epoxy.
Advantages:
- Smooth turning
- Will not mar the blanks finish
- Little resistance to the drying motor
- Other than the wheels, stands are made out of materials lying around. The aluminum stock came from a machine shop, their trash my treasure
- Can serve double duty. Drying stand/spline finder. To use as spline finder: With roller on table top lay rod butt in wheels, hand on tip other half way down and spin blank in you hands. Blank jumps to the spline. One of the best & easiest spline finders I have made.
Wood, aluminum, corian, and angle iron are what were used in the above stands
Construction
Wheels I got from Play it again Sports. They will usually have a drawer full of "misfits" and are happy to get rid of them. Use the SOFTEST ones you can find. I looked at used wheels but they weren't round and the bearings usually shot. If you have used wheels but are no good pop out the bearing and save the spacer. You can use it later.
Bearings are next, 2 per wheel with aluminum or nylon spacer. My recommendation is at least abec 5 preferring 7.
Bolt is ¼ x 28 x 1½. To use this bolt you need the skid/grind plate, which is shown as the white bar. I highly recommend using these because they are adjustable eliminating the need for accurate hole drilling.
Washers are one ¼" metal and one ¼" nylon per, installed on the back side of wheel. Nut to hold it on.
Body/stand on this roller set is left over corain. Whatever you can think of. Just make sure that the height of the wheels (where rod rests) does not exceed the center of the drying motor! Make it shorter about ½" to 1". If you end up drying a large diameter rod you'll have room to play with because you are going to level the rod by shimming up the roller stands. Shorter is better.
After you get it built take a Drill or Dremel with small sanding drum and spin the wheels a bit to loosen up the bearings. Rocket fuel!
On the bubble  Example of adjustable stand  Nut/wheel/nylon washer/metal washer/white grind plate  Head of bolt Back of grind plate showing how it is adjustable  Wheels solid mounted, no adjustable plate. If holes are drilled to close together use washers to shim wheel out and away from the other wheel. This makes a good roller for small rods.
 Ready to use. Out of the picture is the roller at the tip  Another adjustable stand  Solid stand, adjust height with small pieces of thin wood, I use 6x6 paneling  2 Flex coat 18rpm drying motors and 30/40/50 rpm 3 speed motor on the right  Clemens lathe with roller blade wheels, smooooth  Save some OEM wheels for the rods tip Keep'm turning! |
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