Animated Pirate Ship's Wheel

This Instructable describes an animated ship's wheel similar to the one seen in Disney's Pirate's of the Caribbean ride at DL and WDW. I apologize for the lack of interim photos, but I did this many years ago before the Instructables website existed. I mainly offer this as inspiration for you to design your own, since I think the concept development is most of the fun anyway. I laid the entire project out in Solidworks, however the files are unfortunately long gone.

Step 1 Planning

I started by researching the wheel portion assuming I would just purchase a small ship's wheel on Ebay. I wanted a wheel that would work in scale with the cheap standard four foot tall blow-molded skeletons sold in most Halloween stores. I quickly realized that a purchased ship's wheel would not work. They were far too large and/or expensive. I did find smaller ones, but they were not scaled down, just reduced in diameter. They also looked too realistic in that I wanted a Disney-esque look that was more whimsical and cartoony.

 

I walked around the local Big Box store looking for inspiration and found some inexpensive balustrade spindles that were about 7 1/2" tall. They would work perfectly for the spokes of my wheel, and for the handles with some modifications.