On Sep 26, 9:21 pm, "Michael Koblic" wrote:
...
I am really talking about step pulleys to illustrate a point. I am not
married to them as a solution for this particular problem. However, they are
the most available item here. Gears of any shape are rare as hen's teeth and
more expensive.

I had always thought people who cast things out of melted beer cans in their
back yard as mildly weird enthusiasts. I am not laughing any more :-)

--
Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC

If you had a wood lathe you could make pulleys from glued wood bolted
between aluminum sheets. The larger driven pulley doesn't really need
a vee groove, for example my lathe has a vee pulley on the motor and a
flat one on the countershaft. http://www.lathes.co.uk/southbend/page4.html

If you had a wood lathe you wouldn't need to because you could polish
your disks on it. The kind to look for has a face plate mount on the
left end of the spindle for turning large bowls.

A rotary sander or buffer will turn the work piece all by itself, you
don't need to drive it separately, just allow it to rotate. You
control the speed by the angle of contact.

When I ground the flat for the blade on the motorcycle tire for my
sawmill I found that it made a good rotary table. It already has an
axle with good bearings and a brake disk you could extend with
plywood, the spinning tread isn't particularly dangerous although the
spokes can be, and it has enough inertia that is doesn't speed up too
quickly if the grinder runs parallel to the rim. The bike had been in
a crash that bent the forks but didn't damage the wheel very much.

Jim Wilkins