Stempunk remote finished!1

I posted a picture of my knife switch project with the following note: "What do you do when you need a large double pole, double throw knife switch and you start searching for it and realize that such large a switch is hard to find and when you do find one it's incredibly expensive? Well, if your me, you build your own. This one is almost finished, I've still two screws to copper plate and some oiling and finish work on the wood."

Well, I finished the project last night, all the parts fabricated, copper plated, assembled, wired and tested.

The back story: Last winter I was having trouble with the winch on my Kawasaki Mule. The electrical contacts in the remote were burnt so the winch couldn't lift or lower the snow plow blade. I was able to stumble through the snow season by removing the remote, bringing it inside and sanding the contacts. Often. Very often. Very very often.

I looked for a replacement controller in town but to no avail. I ordered one from Amazon but it turned out to by wired/designed wrong for my winch.

So! I built one from scratch in a junction box with a momentary contact automobile starter switch and a 25 amp double pole double throw switch. It worked fine but it is pretty much just a plain vanilla, a no class, no pazazz box with a button. :-(

Well, I got to thinking about a controller built around an old style knife switch, which I found to be unavailable or incredibly expensive, etc., -as noted above...

Parenthetical aside: (I seem to have found myself in this position pretty often over the years, -I want something or need something and due to unavailability or cost, end up having to make it myself. For example; I needed a 2 foot diameter pulley to motorize my grain mill that I need for milling malted barley to make beer. The cost of a pulley that size was quite excessive so I ended up making my own out of wood. It's worked fine for 6 or 8 years now.)

Fast forward to today: My steam punk massive winch controller is complete! No snow drift is safe! I can pull my Mule out of any mud hole! Next summer I'll yank stumps out of the ground right and left! The world is mine, mine, all mine!!! -GRIN-