What would YOU make with THIS?

[Old Greenhorn]

Taking a stab at a new thread here for general input from the learned mass we have here. Hopefully others might add their own conundrums. The input I receive for our muddled mass of closet geniuses over the years had led me into many new adventures and techniques I had never considered before. So rather than start a project and then get input that changes my direction, I thought I would try doing it up front before I start.
Just about this time every year I look around my shop at all the oddities I have collected and try to decide what I can make from them that is saleable. Sometimes it's for the sale, sometimes it's just to use them up and get rid of them (a quick cheap sale).
SO to start this off, I have two subject items. The first is a plain old cookie:



 

This is a Maple cookie measuring about 15 x 18 x 3" thick. I need to run it on the slabmizer to flatten it a bit, but it is not split. I did start doing crack fills with left over epoxy from other jobs, but I knew I would do that anyway. I had thought of a clock in the middle of a big epoxy pour, but man, that is going to be a lot of epoxy to fill that hole! I am wondering if anyone has other ideas?

The second item is routine, a set of sewing machine legs:


 

The difference for me on these legs is that they have the treadle which functions like new. Yes, I will put a nice top on it, probably ERC, but I am wondering if there is something I can do to use that treadle? perhaps something that would amuse children at Grandma's house? I thought of a little generator with a light, but that would get boring pretty quick. I think this group would come up with something just bordering on whacky, or cute, or off the wall, or downright neat.

So I am calling out all the 'alternative thinking folks" (which is just about everybody here) and I will name a few like @doc henderson  @Larry , @WV Sawmiller , @tule peak timber , @Trimguy , @CustonSawyer , @YellowHammer , @Southside and anybody else I didn't think of off the top of my head to be named later.
Please help me figure out what to make from this stuff. Please.

[Southside]

A treadle powered cream separator comes to mind. The hand crank ones had a bell that only rang when you had the handle spinning fast enough.  Maybe something along that line?

[Wlmedley]

I wonder if a small wood lathe could be ran with that treadle.I've saw some ran with a piece of rope ran around the wood being turned and looped around the operators feet so the treadle would have to be a big improvement over that.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

   I still have 2 of those frames to use for something. One still has a stiff but working treadle.

   Maybe you can hook the treadle to a lazy Susan in the middle of the table top and use the foot pedal to rotate the Lazy Susan. :D

    I see great things from the cookie but it requires skill and experience with epoxy that I don't have. (Maybe the cookie will be the Lazy Susan ;)).

[Nebraska]

That cookie with some black walnut legs or carved willow would make a neat 3 legged stool. Kind of thick for a clock face. A fair bit of epoxy will be used either way. A Custom swivel seat for one of those deluxe mushroom inoculating tables.  What were they called... the "sporminator" or some such name. 

[fluidpowerpro]

Mount a big truck brake drum on top and run a blower with the treadel to make a coal forge. With all of the new Forged in Fire blacksmiths out there someone will buy it.

[twar]

Use the cookie as a tabletop. Put a round-cut piece of hardened glass that extends slightly beyond the cookie edges to "close" the hole. Maybe the glass can rest on discreetly placed rubber "bumpers", pads, suction cups etc. to stabilize it. Just brainstorming here...

[doc henderson]

Fred Flintstone needs a spare tire, and a motor upgrade with the treadle.  i will have to think a bit more.

[trimguy]

For the cookie, put it on the mill and cut 1" off for the clock and use the 2" for a stool, small table.

[trimguy]

You could also put a mirror in the 1" piece instead of a clock.

[customsawyer]

With the sewing machine base you could always put a sewing machine on it. ;D  Don't y'all have some apple orchards up that way? You could put one of those spinning apple peeler type of things on it. This would allow the user to have both hands free to handle the apples.
Don't have much yet for the cookie that others haven't already said.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, interesting stuff so far. Many of you are thinking of semi-practical things that folks like us would want. I learned a long time ago that nobody in the general public is like 'us'. ;D
I was thinking of something that would be amusing for anybody in today's world. Separating cream for instance has a relatively low demographic appeal, even though I think it's a cool idea.
A lazy susan turning at 25rpm or so is a little scary, but also kind of cool. How would you keep stuff on it though? :D
The mirror idea I have done (have one in my stock now and another in work), but perhaps. I like Arnold's idea of splitting the cookie and may go that way. Two sales for the material of one, kind of like when your stock splits. :D (OK, maybe not quite.)
For the treadle I was trying to come up with something anybody today could grasp. Maybe a USB charger that you could use to teach kids 'device discipline'. i.e. 'You can only use your tablet as long as you charge it with the treadle generator' or something like that.
Or maybe a carousel type thing with little birds on swings that rotates with the treadle and the swings 'swing out' as it goes faster? Something I could have at a show that says 'try me' and would attract kids to pump the peddle and watch it work. That might draw a crowd with parents always following kids around at shows. Also, I would like to have it somewhat removable so that if they want it to be 'just a table' that is not hard to do. Also something within my skills range.
I can hear the wheels spinning out there. Something is going to pop up, I just know it.

[21incher]

A green energy  desk. Put a top on it with a led light.  Hook a small generator to the pedal and you have a green machine worth 10x the investment.  Advertise as a green exercise machine. Maybe  even a cell phone charger or emergency  radio would add to the value  ;D

[Stephen1]

I'm not on the list..but....cut 1" off the cookie, put your picture in the hole and give it to your wife for Christmas, she can hang it on the wall and look at you all day long while your out and about. 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)

[dougtrr2]

For the cookie I would use it to display something.  Either permanently under a glass top, or encased in clear epoxy.

For the treadle, I think you could adapt it to one of those hand cranked marble races


Doug in SW IA

[WV Sawmiller]

    That reminds me that after leaving Jake's place last April we went to see my Aunt in Lake City Fla and on the way back home we stopped at the Stephen Foster Memorial at a Fla State Park there along the Suwannee River. One of the songs Steven Foster wrote appears to have been Camptown Races and they had a big display with little model horses and riders on a track. You'd push a button and the song would play and he horses and jockeys would run around the track.

    Maybe you could build something like that hooked to the pedal and the horses could run around the track. Either that or use a toy dinosaur chasing a scientist with a Jurassic Park theme and the faster you pedal the faster they both run around a track. :D

[Hilltop366]

I was thinking of a merry-go round for the sewing machine, incorporate a music box movement and tiny lights with generator.

[Big_eddy]

The maple cookie looks to be tap-hole maple, with the various stains and holes from old taps. If it were me, I would take that nice big hole in the middle and enlarge / reshape it into a large maple leaf shape. You are already almost there - it just needs a couple more lobes added. Then turn it into a display case with a dark (or maple leaf red) backing, and a glass top secured with a few strategically placed fasteners.

Then when you go to sell it, tell the story of the tap-hole staining. I have found that once a potential customer hears the story and understands what caused those patterns, they just "have to have it".

[Big_eddy]

Or then slice it into 3 thinner cookies and make 3 maple leaf clocks to hang on the sugar house wall. Use an old auger bit for the minute hand, and a newer tapping drill for the hour hand. Stick and old tap or two in the hole before filling with epoxy.

[Larry]

The sewing machine peddle could turn a crankshaft below the table.  Affixed to the crankshaft lobes would be rods that pop up through the top.  On the end of each rod above the table have something like maybe animals.  Bugs bunny on one rod and maybe a hunter on another rod.  Sounds like lots of work....

Turn the cookie into wall art.  In the center maybe a picture of me, no that would be too scary.

[doc henderson]

Larry, maybe your face could pop up like the rest of the animals!   :D :D :D

[Hilltop366]

Miniature train set under a glass top that runs when you operate the generator.

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, I think the juices are flowing better now and I like some of these ideas. Many are a bit beyond me but would be really cool to see.
Now I am wondering about just doing a fan, something with wood blades, but I would have to get the pulley ratios right so it doesn't spin like an egg beater. ;D
Still thinking, if something else comes to mind from the above ideas.
BTW, that cookie is not from a tap hole tree, it is red maple and never had a tap. The cookie in the photo was butt trim from right above the stump.

[YellowHammer]

Sorry it took so long to chime in, I really liked the cookie a lot, but couldn't figure out how match things together with the sewing machine.  Had to sleep on it a little, but then bang, I had it. 

Now I know what I would do, Martha is a big recycler for aluminum drink cans, plastic drink bottles, stuff like that.  We even have a recycle bin in the showroom right next to the trash bin for customers to throw their stuff in.   I'm sure you've seen the ones that look like a bin with a round hole cut in the top....

So I would use the sewing machine base, it's a great piece of old rustic history, add a little more something to it to make it a bin, like black wrought iron screen or something, (remember the old school, black wire screen on city park garbage bins?) then work the cookie a little and make it into the top, with a hole in the middle for the recyclables to be thrown in.  An old school, rustic, recycling bin made from a recycled cookie with a big hole in as the top, and and old, recycled, sewing machine base.  It would be a work of art. 

Or mount a bin on the base of the sewing machine and still use the cookie with the hole as the top.  I think I might make one myself!  Too late for Christmas I think, maybe not. 

[WV Sawmiller]

Robert,

   That cookie is too pretty to use for something like that. I think you should be able to find big hollow pine cookie and an old Bear Bryant picture with a big mouth opening over it to put trash recycles into. The quality of recycles may vary between Alabama fans and customers favoring other SEC teams but you should do great things for the environment. ;) :D