This panel has been sitting around too long; it’s time to put wheels on it. I want the panel to be relatively high up, so that neither the wheels nor the cyclist (me) will cast a shadow on the panel. That’s not the best design from the standpoint of stability or wind resistance, but that’s life. I also would like to make a structure that can be leveraged onto a narrower panel if I ever get one.
I settled on 1″ x 1/16″ aluminum angle stock as the least expensive material that would do the job. After sketching out on paper what the pieces would need to look like, it was time to fabricate.
So I needed pieces 23.125″ and 32.08″ long. A cutoff saw would have been the ideal tool, or maybe a bandsaw. None of that stuff in my amateur shop, though, and I’m too cheap to rent out shop time at $80 a month. Hacksaw? That would work, but I’d have to file to the final dimension. It turned out that I was able to get a 7″ abrasive blade at a flea market (by now, you might notice that flea markets figure heavily in my material supply) for a dollar, and fit that onto my table saw.