My Challenge to Make a Marble Run Machine - A Looped Rail

In the previous blog post, I've written I want to make my marble run machine like an amusement park. You can imagine an atmosphere with attractions that cause dizzy feelings or going up and down, can't you? Unexpectedly, I got one part that was exactly an amusement type for my marble run machine yesterday. It was a looped, single-turn rail.

You probably have seen a rail that is looped on a roller coaster. My husband made it exactly like that.

Once, the idea of a looped rail popped into my mind, but I didn't think I could make it and abandoned it.
However, my husband did it!

He spent lots of effort. 

 

 

To begin with, he glued several small pieces of timber. There were two reasons he glued them.

One was making the timber firm. 

The other one was to prevent jagged edges. If you have experience cutting timber, you may know the direction of the grain is important to make sure.
If you cut timber the wrong way, you get chipped grain, and the edge of the timber would be jagged. Avoiding the jagged edges, he had to glue timbers in various directions because the shape he was going to make was a circle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He used a rounded T-groove bit. As it's called, the head is T-shaped so that it can cut even the deepest parts that the usual bit cannot. This was very useful because the rail needed fences on both sides.

Before cutting the timber, he edited the G-cord. When it started cutting, he was careful to cut only the part he needed. As you can see in the picture, if the bit moves straight right up, it hits the timber. He turned the timber over, cut the other side, and then turned it over again. He repeated this process several times.

After spending lots of effort and time, here it is, a looped rail.
It looks like a rail in an amusement park's roller coaster, doesn't it?

I haven't decided yet where this goes. I must make rails to connect to this looped rail too. Next time when I update this blog, hopefully, I could finish setting this looped rail.

It was the day my dream got one step closer to making my marble run machine like an amusement park.
Thanks, Juno!