Manliest Lazy Susan Ever
I was changing out a 12" miter saw blade that had lived a decent life but needed retirement, and wondered how it might be re-purposed. I came up with the idea of making a Lazy Susan turntable for the grill that could double as a weapon if the zombie apocalypse happened to drop at the same time you happened to be fixing up some burgers. I call it the Lazy Sawsan, pun intended.
Materials:
12" used miter/table saw blade
Lazy Susan ring (about 4 bucks at Home Depot)
4 nuts/bolts
Scrap plate aluminum
Tools:
Angle grinder with metal cut off wheel, grinding wheel and buffing wheel
Drill (preferably drill press)
Welder (or optionally epoxy would probably work fine)
Wire brush
Screw Driver
Crescent wrench
Preping the Blade
Clamp your 12" (or larger, smaller might work too but I don't know if it will work with the lazy component to this) to something and polish the crap out of it, polish it like it owes you money. Make it all nice and shiny. You only need to do this to one side of it, the other side won't be visible anyway. I decided to leave some of the yellow around the perimeter of this particular brand, but not make it a perfect circle because I thought it looked cooler this way, you do it however you want it. I suppose you could just clean it up and paint it whatever color you want, but that's not very manly. Set the blade aside.
Creating the Base Plate
Take your scrap aluminum, or wood or whatever... this is quarter inch billet aluminum, and lay your Lazy Susan rig on top. Use a quick square or whatever kind of square you have laying around and mark up the aluminum so you have a square a bit bigger than the Lazy Susan. You don't want it much bigger because you will have to turn it to attach it to the saw blade... I went about 1/2" from either of the two sides shown in the photo so the square was about 1/4" bigger on each side than the Lazy Susan. Cut out that square.
Now put the Lazy Susan mechanism on the cut out square. Mark where you will drill holes to mount the Lazy Susan to the base. Take a center punch if you have one and give it a tap on each of the dots you made on the base, this will help to make sure your drill bit doesn't track and that you get the holes where you want them. This isn't super critical for soft metal like aluminum but can't hurt. Now, drill the holes with a bit the same diameter as the holes on your Lazy Susan mechanism.
Now put the Lazy Susan mechanism on the cut out square. Mark where you will drill holes to mount the Lazy Susan to the base. Take a center punch if you have one and give it a tap on each of the dots you made on the base, this will help to make sure your drill bit doesn't track and that you get the holes where you want them. This isn't super critical for soft metal like aluminum but can't hurt. Now, drill the holes with a bit the same diameter as the holes on your Lazy Susan mechanism.
Attaching the Base Plate to the Lazy Susan Mechanism
I picked up some of these rubber feet to give good stick and stability to the Lazy Sawsan. The screws it came with were wood screws so I also grabbed some bolts and lock nuts, the kind with nylon in them. I didn't check the exact diameter or length, I just held them up to the materials I was working with and eyeballed it, but if you're working with the same stuff the bin #'s from Ace are shown on the bag below. The bolts should be long enough to pass through the feet, the plate and the Lazy Susan rig, but short enough so that the Lazy Susan rig can still spin freely once the nuts are on. These rubber feet have metal disks in them making them very solid, but the holes in the disk were just a bit too small for the bolts, so I drilled them out just a little using the same drill bit from the previous step.
Once your pieces are set up so that you can hand tighten the whole thing together do so, then tighten up with a wrench and screw driver. Then you probably need to put a few drops of oil or bearing grease into the Lazy Susan mechanism. This one called for it specifically, check your packaging... I just put a couple drops of 3 in 1 in there and spun it around. Don't overdo it.
Once your pieces are set up so that you can hand tighten the whole thing together do so, then tighten up with a wrench and screw driver. Then you probably need to put a few drops of oil or bearing grease into the Lazy Susan mechanism. This one called for it specifically, check your packaging... I just put a couple drops of 3 in 1 in there and spun it around. Don't overdo it.
Attaching the Base to the Blade
First kind of eyeball where you think the base corners will end up and clean up those areas a bit, since this will be welded and you want clean welds.
In order to make this thing work and look really nice you want to center the blade on the Lazy Susan mechanism. To do this use your quick square or other straight edge and draw two lines through the middle of the blade on the non-polished side splitting it into exactly even quarters. The easiest way to do this is to line your straight edge up with the front of the saw teeth on opposing sides of the blade.
Once you have your lines drawn put your base on the blade and line up the holes on the Lazy Susan half not attached to anything on the lines you drew. If you have the lines bifurcating each hole as shown in the picture, you have centered the Lazy Susan mechanism on the blade, it's that simple.
Now just weld a couple of points, one on either side of the corners. I used my wire feed welder. This will hold very nicely. Clean it up with a wire brush. You could probably use epoxy here if you can't weld or don't have a welder.
Flip the piece over, you may have a couple of dark spots on the other side now from the welding, these will buff out without a problem and you'll be left with a nice completed project. Throw it on a grill or in the kitchen or just use it as your garage project turntable or whatever and enjoy.
In order to make this thing work and look really nice you want to center the blade on the Lazy Susan mechanism. To do this use your quick square or other straight edge and draw two lines through the middle of the blade on the non-polished side splitting it into exactly even quarters. The easiest way to do this is to line your straight edge up with the front of the saw teeth on opposing sides of the blade.
Once you have your lines drawn put your base on the blade and line up the holes on the Lazy Susan half not attached to anything on the lines you drew. If you have the lines bifurcating each hole as shown in the picture, you have centered the Lazy Susan mechanism on the blade, it's that simple.
Now just weld a couple of points, one on either side of the corners. I used my wire feed welder. This will hold very nicely. Clean it up with a wire brush. You could probably use epoxy here if you can't weld or don't have a welder.
Flip the piece over, you may have a couple of dark spots on the other side now from the welding, these will buff out without a problem and you'll be left with a nice completed project. Throw it on a grill or in the kitchen or just use it as your garage project turntable or whatever and enjoy.