Make Your Own Water Wheel

the hill 671 here and I'm going to show you today how to make a simple four foot 48 inch diameter water wheel out of some old junky would replace redwood deck boards or torn some out what to do with all that old nasty redwood two by six items needed will be preferably a 16-gauge finish nailer like Home Depot special right there a cordless drill/driver to have an impact driver and the basics tape measure speed square and obviously something to mark with could do this with a hand miter saw but I would recommend a chop saw or radial arm saw would work too so the idea behind this design is to use up two by sixes old deck material but of course as you can see here we've got two by fours used as the spoke so you will need a little bit of two-by-four material but the water buckets the outside rim and this Center hub piece and most of it will actually be short pieces of two by six which is what you end up with if you you know rip out it rip out it a lot of stuff like this where you've got rotten ends and nails sticking out and all that I've been pulling the nails out only because you could just cut these ends off with the chop saw but to risk hitting a nail that you didn't see which I did once already with my blade so I would recommend just cutting all the nails out of the board you're going to thing you'll need is a nice flat work area to lay this out and assemble it which you know concrete garage floor driveway I'm using the back of a flatbed truck which is flat enough to keep the whole thing flat and straight and even with our four foot water wheel start with a center spoke which is just going to be a four-foot length of 2x4 redwood alright for our four footer we just want to mark mark the center layout which is going to be you know write it draw a line right at two feet so once you've got your four foot or your two foot center mark just strike a line with a square then for your cross spokes perpendicular spoke we're going to cut two pieces at 22 and a quarter measure in from one side or the other and make a market one in 3/4 inch as a center mark on each one of the spokes or more pieces for your intermediate spokes at 21 and a half actually might as well double everything you're doing because you might as well cut pieces for both sides so you cut eight intermediate spokes at 21 and a half inches take your one end of each one of your intermediate spoke pieces and from the center line strike a 45 going each way you're going to cut each of your eight intermediate spokes right on your 45 line so what you want to end up with is something that comes to a point on one end and measures 21 and a half inches overall from the point back to the other end you're finished cutting the intermediate spokes you should have eight like this that are come to a point on the one end at a 45 taper and measure 21 and a half inches overall from the point to the back this is where it helps have a nail gun but taking wood glue on the secondary spoke line up your so nail it in and same thing with the other side wood glue line up the two marks so that you know you're in the center use these composite deck screws they're expensive with their best for holding things together and they have this square drive head which is doesn't strip as much and the next step is to use screws at an angle similar to the toenail and I start the other one before burying the first one so that it doesn't push the wood one way or the other you can bury this one countersink them below the surface of the wood time for new batteries make sure these screws are all the way in and if there's nails sticking out at all just drive them in with a nail set or a drift or punch or something take your intermediate spoke pieces just cut from the paired and arrange them good side up into the corners as such so that they should fit in with here your 45 degree point that you prepared like so and then we're not going to screw or nail them we just want them sitting there in the corners at this point now what you want to do is take this intermediate spoke and split the difference between the 90s on both sides of it we should have about 15 and 1/8 from the outside corner there to the outside corner there and move it a little bit if you split the difference exactly it should be just a little bit over 15 inches or right around the neighborhood of 15 inches we're not nailing these intermediates and we're just going to let them sit there at this point so these next pieces make up the outer rim of the wheel of the water wheel and this is where your leftover deck material comes in this is where you use up the old two by six because you're going to cut it into really short pieces so what you want to want to end up with is a section that is 15 inches on the long end and then each of these angles are cut at 22 and 1/2 degrees which is half of 40 plus some water wheels I've seen have a 10 spokes or six spokes but the reason reason eight spoke is it makes this whole layout easier these are all normal angle cuts 45s and then out here on the edge with our outside of the wheel perimeter pieces this angle ends up at twenty two and a half which is a standard on all chop saw miter saws these these outer wheel pieces the good part about this is it's a standard cut 22 and a half is a standard notch on most miter saws and that's going to give you exactly the angle you want for the outside pieces you're all done you should make sixteen of these eight for each side and again this is the only part really where consistency in length is kind of important because this is going to make up the outside perimeter so you want these to be if these are all the same eight on each side your wheel will be pretty close to round that is without nailing anything in you're going to after you cut your eight or sixteen outside perimeter pieces just set them all into place to make up the circumference of your wheel again we're not gluing or nailing anything yet we're just setting everything into place because there might be some adjustment at this point which you can do you can move these intermediate spokes to make these guys fit a little bit better if need be with a situation like this where these aren't going in flush on one side and then there's big you know gap on the other side and they go way down it just means that this intermediate 90 degrees folk is out of square and you just need to push it one way or the other to fix the problem and once you're satisfied with the fitment in other words these are all pretty close to flush or slightly recessed beyond the spokes then you can go ahead and start gluing and and tone ailing the ends together and while you're fitting these outside pieces leave this floating here so that you can you know make adjustments to make this more consistent you can move these in or out because this spoke will still move from side to side and just kind of get them as consistent as you can and you know it's not a piano it's a water wheel so be perfect so take each one once you've got them fitted you know a little bit of whatever a little bit of wood glue or liquid nails or whatever your preference there put the good side up and fit them in take your finished nail gun and I toenail from the spoke and the other before you screw any of this together you just go around and take each piece put glue on both sides fit it in there and then use your nail gun to toenail it together and just do that all the way around before you put any screws I'm all glued in so just go around and toenail all of them into the spokes okay and once you're at this point it's glued and just toe nailed with a nail gun so you can actually spin it to work on it but screws in but remember these are still just loose floating in here so you don't want to try and pick it up yet these are all still they might be pinched but they're still not attached by any fastener yet you're old you know deck wood it could split easily so you're better off to pre-drill with a bit slightly smaller than you know the size to close that'll screw and knees in will strengthen it considerably gather yes keep rotating it on your work surface or if you're on a concrete floor or whatever and just keep doing that on all eight sides until you're done when you're all done screwing them in you should end up with a somewhat round wheel and the center pieces are loose which we'll address next

Channel: bhill671

Views: 341,025

Keywords: water wheel, waterwheel, decorative water wheel, water feature, landscape fountain, landscaping, yard decoration, gold rush, sawmill

Id: wR8lTdmEVtk

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 09 2012