Things are moving forward fast now that I have the basic outline of a frame done. I’d been putting off a lot of things waiting on it, including installing the Rockler Bearing/Lazy Susan.

I decided to leave the original plastic wrapper on while I drilled the holes, and I also pulled back the plastic and taped off the area on both sides where I would be drilling to make doubly sure nothing would get inside the bearing and lock it up later.

First Problem – I tried to align it inside the dome ring using the tried and tested method of using coins to center it, but there was an issue. If you’ve been following my progress and have a good memory you’ll remember that the dome ring wall varies in thickness. On the outside it’s perfectly round, but on the inside it varies a lot, making it hard to use coins to center the bearing in place.

Using some calipers I figured out 4 spots where I though the wall thickness seemed to be close enough and placed my coins there. It wasn’t perfect, and I was repeatedly tweaking and re-measuring for the longest time. In the end 3 nickels and a one cent taped together seemed to do the trick. They weren’t tight tight, so I used some clamps to lock the bearing in place while I drilled.

Drilling into the dome ring went fine and I don’t think I got any metal shaving in the bearing. After that, and in short order I popped out the little plastic lugs and drilled out the outer bearing ring holes to attach it to the frame.

I still need to attach Daniels inner dome plate and get slightly longer screws that attach the Rockler to the dome, but that’s an easy fix.