Wooden Lock

Wooden Lock: Finishing

By Ben Nitkin on

School starts, and I'm busy again. I have all sorts of cool things to write about, and not enough time to do so. But I'm on top of homework, so here's the conclusion to the combination lock saga!

I wish I could describe the measurements better, but that's a job for engineering drawings, not text. I'll see about making some proper drawings soon.

After deciding on about half the dimensions, we started cutting. The tumblers and washers were first, then I popped a few dowels onto the lathe to turn them down a bit. When I finished, the tumblers spun smoothly on the central shaft.

We assembled the core of the lock with brass screws. First, we slid a washer onto the central shaft, then a tumbler, another washer, and so on until it was built up. After a quick test to make sure everything interfaced well, we screwed the washers into the central dowel with brass screws, being careful to keep the tumblers under a bit of pressure (to prevent wobble and slippage).

Wooden Lock: Design

By Ben Nitkin on

Last time, I described how a combination lock worked. This article describes how the concept is implemented in wood, and our early design process. We started our design by foraging for stuff surveying our assets. We based our design on the large sheet of ¼" plywood, and 3/16" and ½" diameter dowels we found. Foraging Looking for interesting tools netted us hole saws (ranging from ½" to 2" internal diameter).

Wooden Lock: Information

By Ben Nitkin on

Recently, I made a combination lock out of wood. I'll be describing it in a series of articles because to save you, dear reader, from a numbing fifteen hundred word epic.

So, what in the world would posses me to make a combination lock out of wood? Well, some time ago, I saw a working model of a combination lock on woodgears.ca, looked it over, thought it was cool, and stashed the idea in the back of my mind with fulgurates and sous vide.

Months later, I was looking for winter break projects, and I thought of this lock. Helen & I decided to build a pair of them, scaled down from the version that Matthias built on woodgears. Why?