Building a simple turntable for painting models

I'm not much of an artist but one of the things that I need to learn is how to paint and weather models for the railway. To make it easier a small turntable looks like a useful item to have. Now you can of course go out and buy one but I've got a workshop full of scraps of wood and stuff so I thought let's make one.

It's a simple enough design-a circular table on a square base. Both are made from 18mm ply that was lying around the workshop.

Cutting the circular turntable was interesting. I decided to do it on the table saw. I'd seen someone do this and thought I'd give it a try. It's fairly straightforward and produced a really good cut. I could have used a router and circle jig, but this was quicker to set up and do. you just have to be steady and not try to do too much too quickly. I have a 12mm base that sits in the mitre slot and I simple screw fixed the blank to it cutting off the corners and gradually cutting smaller and smaller pieces away until I got the circle.

The square base has a bolt through it to provide a spindle for the rotating table. It's held in place with a counter bored nut.

The rotating table has another counter bore into which a bearing has been pressed. The bearing is for a skateboard and is about 20mm in diameter. A washer over the nut provides a small amount of separation between the table and the base.

Because the bolt head isn't recessed into the base I glued and pinned four triangular feet to it. These were scraps from something else I made recently and they are 9mm ply.

I then put a liberal coat of wax on the base and the turntable surfaces that meet just to help.

I made a second one using just a screw through the top and washer between the base and turntable. This works okay too.