The Luggage: Casting and Swiveling

I've finally, I think, got what I needed in the first place for wheels for The Luggage. While I initially thought the wheels from a stroller I bought would save lots of money, when I started buying stuff to attach them to The Luggage, things began adding up. Nuts and bolts, washers, braces, etc. that I bought the other day cost almost as much as the caster wheels I'd originally considered getting at Harbor Freight. Add in the stroller and it was pretty much the same.

I got stuff during a trip to Home Depot after lots of looking around, asking questions, thinking, etc. But once I got home, some braces I thought were going to be a tight fit turned out to be a bit loose. It got me thinking that whatever I bodged up just wasn't going to stand up to The Luggage being hauled over the ground of what is, for most of the year, a pasture. Plus I began to think I was doing something I have a tendency to do with some projects - overthinking stuff.

So, going for simplicity, I decided to abandon the stroller and consider the money paid for it as chalked up to experience, with most of the hardware to be returned unopened to Home Depot. So I went down to the bus and took another trip out to Harbor Freight.

Once there, I picked out two 5" swivel casters and two 5" fixed casters. But I couldn't shake the feeling that they might not be great on the rough ground. They're a bit smaller than the stroller wheels, which are 6". So I looked a bit more at other wheels on nearby shelves. They have wheels, some more like 8" but needing axles and hardware to hold them on.

Then a bit further down the row I saw some bigger casters. They're inflatable 8" wheels with swivels at $11.69 each (at right) and fixed ones for $9.99.  $43 and change - more than the basic unfinished trunk cost, but really not all that much more than I would've otherwise spent, and these wheels should handle the terrain. They'd better. They not only cost more, they're probably heavier than the trunk itself with all the metal. I put them on the bathroom scale and the four of them come to just shy of 22 pounds. Also, according to the receipt, each wheel was on sale at $5.00 and $5.30 off.

I'll add a couple of 1" x 4" boards to the underside of the trunk for reinforcement and that should make things sturdy enough. Hiding the wheels will be some kind of skirting - cloth or wood to be determined, but whichever, I'll have pictures of lots of feet.

Although Harbor Freight sells all kinds of tools and accessories, they don't sell stuff like nuts and bolts. I'll have to make a trip back to Home Depot for those, but I've got to go anyway to return stuff.

When I was originally thinking of making The Luggage mobile, I thought of just getting a small Radio Flyer-type wagon. That would've been so simple. Then I saw how much even the small ones cost these days, even on eBay.