Another! DIY tonearm.

[Primalsea]

While I'm waiting for my glue to dry I'd thought I post some pictures of my tonearm so far.

The base is a M25 cap screw with a rebate cutout witha Dremel and 2 M25 plate washers glued in with a steel loaded epoxy.

The tome arm is actually a tube made from paper with a layer of Alu tape around it to shield the tomearm wires. The whole thing was wrapped with a cotton thread and painted several times inside and out. I'm not sure about this tube yet as its not as stiff as I wanted it to be. However it is well damped.
The tube has been glued to a polished 12mm stainless steel cap screw.

The other thing is hopefully going to be the arm raiser bar. If you hold the tube and push the bottom of the threaded rod the L profile peice of alu goes upwards. Its as simple as that.

Haven't thought about the head shell yet and not sure about what type of bearing system to use. I might do a Schreoder type thing or I might use string only first and see what happens than try the magnets afterwards.

[Primalsea]

2 more pics

[G.Axiom]

[quote=Primalsea

...The tome arm is actually a tube made from paper with a layer of Alu tape around it... [/QUOTE]

Interesting. Which kind of paper?

Waiting with great interest your reports. I've been also thinkin to try paper next.

[Primalsea]

Here's some more pics

[Primalsea]

And some detail of the arm tube

[Primalsea]

The yoke has come on a bit and you can see where the fishing line will be suspended from. I'm not if this will work yet and I may have to go for the magnets. Problem is the yoke is made of steel and the magnets will magnetise the whole thing.

The armtube was formed using a 9mm wooden dowel as a mandrel. The paper is plain old 80gsm printer paper. The alu tape is just 50mm wide tape and was used to hold the paer in shape and also for sheilding the wires. I used a whole reel of cotton as a wrap and just randomly wound it up and down the arm. It was then coated with button polish but this did not really stiffen it so I added some coats of acrylic paint. As the paints cured it has got harder.

You can see in the new pic the little rod that goes through the capscrew. This is articulated and hopefully will connect to the fishing line and form a nice bearing. Not sure about this at this stage!.

Will it work ?? having fun though making it so if this project does get retired i won't feel too bad.