I need to come up with a right angle gearbox (example)
I’m not a blacksmith and local hardware stores are coming up empty apart from selling a right angle drill attachment (which would work but they’re a bit pricey for my purpose).
The purpose: to hide a water valve (positioned upright) & control it from the other side of a wall. (back story)
My ideas so far:
find a broken angle grinder that someone threw away (seems unlikely) & cannabalize the gears
build right angle gears out of wood
harvest worn down bicycle cassettes from the trash and orient them at right angles against each other. They are designed to mate with a chain, so I’m not sure how well it would work. The valve is only turned on/off a couple times per year, so maybe I can get away with it.
go to a toy store and find a kid’s Capsela set (do they still make these?); though I imagine it might exceed the cost of a right angle drill accessory anyway and it would possibly break under stress.
What other tools or appliances should I look for on a dumpster dive which would likely contain a right angle gearbox?
angle grinder: The gear ratio is probably around 4:1 or more so you’d either be turning the knob forever or it would be very difficult to turn
Wood gears: Much harder than you think, but not impossible with the right tools, but I’m assuming you don’t have them. If you are determined you can go check out woodgears.ca however, he has some templates you can print out and cut out.
Bicycle cassette: Those are sprockets not gears. They would be quite clunky and difficult to use as gears.
The best thing to do would be to simply relocate the valve. With some sharkbite fittings and some copper pipe and a Pipe Cutter you could easily relocate the valve, and there would be less work than trying to fit in a cobbled together right angle gearbox.
I should have clarified, the gear templates on woodgears.ca can’t likely be used as is. You would would likely either have to bevel the teeth or use the “divide” option and use dowels as gears to make pin gears like this
I wouldnt use pex. A sharkbite will work with regular copper tube. The peg gear system would be the easiest to “cobble together” without too many tools.
xkcd #2871: Definitely ( imgs.xkcd.com )
xkcd.com/2871...