I was provided an image of a wooden candy machine and I did some on-line searching to see what varieties exist out there on the World Wide Candy Machine Web. The model in the original image had a drawer-like slider that pulled out to drop a small load of candy into an externally-mounted trough. Some variations had the candy dropping inside with the trough exiting through a wall, which seemed neater to me - more like the commercial mall machines. The candy release technique also had a few variations including the aformentioned pull-out, a spring-loaded button or a rotary mechanism. I liked the combination that we settled on with the internal trough and the rotary mechanism.

Then I just had to design it. Of course it wasn't exactly rocket science (or indeed radio frequency digital communications equipment design) but I did need to nail down a few things like the volume of the candy load, how it all goes together and how to get it apart if malfunctions occur. I ended up making the unit mostly solid wood with a threaded top to receive a standard Mason jar. The bottom includes a handle to aid in the screwing-on-the-jar operation. For potential jams due to candy shards or other unanticipated problems, the top can be lifted off by removing a locking pin and then all the moving parts can be accessed.

Here are a couple nice planks ready to work on, one in walnut and the other in oak.

As the exploded view above shows, there's a schwack of pieces that need to get made. The first step was cutting pieces to size and I mostly did that up front. That involved my usual cut-to-size activities starring the bandsaw, the radial arm saw and the planer.

Some time later and after labelling to help keep things straight, I had a pile of almost all the pieces I needed for the oak candy machine.

Off screen is another pile of pieces which are the same as these but walnutier.

I decided to start with the candy wheel assembly (in fact, before I even took the previous photo). The wheel has a cavity that receives the confection from above and via a rotation action provided by the operator, delivers the load to the chute.

The assembly consists of the wheel itself, a socket and a backing board.

A 3/4"-thick square wheel blank was taped to a turning axle, cut roundish and then turned to the proper diameter on the lathe. While still on the lathe, an axle hole was drilled.

This shot shows the result of all that activity.

After removing the turning axles, the wheels were marked for the candy cavity in preparation for a visit to the bandsaw.

Once the cavity was cut out, its edges were smoothed with files.

The last operation was to cut a square notch in the center hole, a somewhat-finicky undertaking involving handsaws, a tiny-bladed knife and needle files.

The second component of the wheel assembly is the socket. This started as another rectangular piece of wood (admittedly not very obvious when spinning at 800 RPM) which then had the proper-sized hole turned into it.

That holey rectangle needed to have both the top and bottom sections cut out to allow for the free passage of glorious candy. To keep the side-to-side relationship intact it was first taped to a thin piece of plywood.

Here the oak socket is getting cut to the lines while the walnut waits in the wings.

The next step was to glue the socket to the rectangular backing piece as shown here.

Then with the glue dried, the edges sanded, the plywood removed and the wheel installed, the assembly is shown complete.

I came across a very simple sketch of one candy machine that had sides that looked like they were made from laminated planks. I rather liked the look and decided to incorporate that feature. Of course a simple flat wall would have been easier and faster, but that's what they make retirements for.

The group of 3/4"-square pieces seen in the earlier pile-o'-pieces photo were made for the side walls.

To emphasize the plankiness, I bevelled the corners slightly using a small plane.

The bevel is maybe 0.05" wide at a 45° angle.

I arranged the wood planks to get contrasting grain patterns and once the pieces were glued together they formed the side walls, one of which is shown here.

The top is a critical piece since it needs to engage the threads on the mouth of the candy jar. I had seen some candy machine examples where this was accomplished by screwing the metal jar lid to the top but that wasn't going to cut the mustard here.

The plan was to make suitable jar-matching threads for a nice clean look.

But first things first; I needed to select a jar.

After failing to find any nice clear threaded jars, I decided to go with a Mason-style jar. I checked a box of them we had kicking around and found several different types, but none very nice. I stumbled across this one in a cupboard and liked it since it had three unblemished sides and little text on the last side. It also had wavy glass which gave it a nice look.

I eventually determined that it had originally come filled with picked asparagus. Since I couldn't find a match anywhere else for the second one I needed, I just bought another jar of asparagus, which was consumed well before I finished the candy dispensers.

I started with a square blank which was taped to a large wooden disc attached to a faceplate.

The first step was to dig out my largest Forstner bit which drilled an almost-big-enough hole.

Using a flat scraper, the hole diameter was enlarged to match the jar top.

I left a smaller-diameter bottom ridge to meet the top edge of the jar. The ridge position determines exactly how far down the jar will thread.

In this shot, the turning is done except for some fine tweaking of the bottom ridge which will be done later.

The start of the threads is an open ramp into which the jar threads can start to engage.

Here I'm cutting the gradually-deepening ramp which will go about 2/3 of the way around the hole before it becomes deep enough to be fully embedded in the side wall of the hole.

The threads were to be cut manually which meant that I first needed to mark them on the inside of the hole. I thought the best way to do that was to make a cardboard pattern through which the center-line of the thread could be drawn. The pattern is pretty simple - just straight lines at the appropriate angle on a flat piece of cardboard which is then bent into a loop. The narrow slots were provided with periodic breaks so the pattern didn't end up as a pile of cardboard ribbon.

The template was cut the precise length for one lap of the hole and inserted to start the threads at the desired location.

I whipped up a little mini-pencil that could fit inside the hole to be able to conveniently trace the openings.

Then I just needed to figure out how to cut the threads.

I decided that a Dremel tool was probably best used to cut the threads so I looked around for a suitably-shaped bit. And came up empty. So I decided I needed to make my own - a bit that would cut a slot of the appropriate width and depth when used from the side.

As raw material I chose a wood screw with a head the most appropriate size and shape. I first filed the threads off and then cut some unevenly-spaced teeth into the head using a narrow diamond cutting disc. The bit worked surprisingly well considering the humble starting material and crude construction.

I started on the threads by cutting a rectangular slot to act as a guide. The slot just followed the pencil lines for the 1-1/2 revolutions of thread to a depth of about 1/8".

Then I switched to the custom cutter and followed the guide slots. That widened and shaped the slots to be a closer match to the glass threads on the jar.

I tried screwing on the jar but it barely fit the first time so I touched up tight sections and tried again. I kept doing that until it went on relatively smoothly.

The Mason jar I was planning to use has three clear sides and a logo on the fourth side. When mounted on the candy machine of course the logo would be upside-down so I arranged to put the logo side at the back, meaning that the jar had to screw in just the right amount.

I put the top back on the lathe and took off tiny amounts of the inner ridge until the jar stopped at the correct orientation.

The A720 IS is an older point-and-shoot used for my workshop photos. It's a bit on the big and klunky side but fine for my application. I bought it in 2008 and have used it for the last 15 years.

It has worked faithfully for over 30,000 photos (and two or three sets of rechargeable AA batteries).

Unfortunately it has a plastic (plastic? really?) tripod mount which gave out in July of this year so I was forced to retire it. An unfortunate end for a fine photographic workhorse.

The replacement is a slightly newer and much smaller point-and-shoot with, I was happy to see, a metal tripod mount.

The top needed an angled slot on the underside to facilitate tilting it up for removal and this was done on the router table with an appropriately-thick block taped on to set the angle.

Those round slot ends will later be squared off using a chisel.

The last operation on the top was to round the sides. My cobbled-together "rounding sides" wedge was taped to the sander table and I first bevelled the edges as shown here and then manually sanded off the corners for a curved profile.

And that's it for the top.

The shaft extends from the crank through to the candy wheel with both ends keyed to prevent rotation. A reduced-diameter section in the middle accommodates a slotted shaft lock which prevents it being pulled out.

Man, this thing has a lot of parts. Well, let's just move things along here with some summary photos;

The shaft was fabricated probably about how you'd expect; It started with a square-section blank which was then turned to a 3/8" diameter. I was able to use the open-end-wrench-based cutters I'd made for a previous project - 3/8" for the main shaft and 1/4" for the reduced-diameter section. After turning, a simple jig that held the shaft was used to help route in the keyways at each end. One end was drilled for a machine screw a bit later on.

The oak shaft is almost done in this photo. The crank will fit onto the left end of the shaft and it just needs the length trimmed to the pencil line and a screw hole drilled.

The chute is kind of the heart of the candy machine. It's a bit of an odd shape but fabrication turned out to be relatively straightforward.

Most operations were fairly simple. I think I spent the bulk of the time sanding the hollow topside - mostly getting rid of scratches from the rotary rasp used to shape it.

Voilà.

I decided to incorporate a handle in the bottom plate to aid in attaching the body to the glass jar. This turned a simple square into something requiring a bit more attention.

Your basic drill, saw, file and sand;

This shows the bottom plate from the underside, with rounded corners wherever a hand may come in contact.

The shaft lock is made to slide over the thinner portion of the shaft to hold it in place. Removal of the lock lets the shaft slide out to free the candy wheel. The top taper provides room for a gripping set of fingers.

Fabrication was pretty straightforward as shown below.

This shows the completed shaft lock. The pencilled "0.85" on the top just marked the thickness to which the piece was cut.

Front and back are both 0.65"-thick pieces with appropriate holes.

Of these two the front was a bit more involved. It needed the mouse-hole cut-out for the candy chute, and its bottom contour needed to match the underside of the chute. It also had the shaft hole and a rear-side notch to add.

The back was simpler since it had only a round-bottomed notch with a central hole. After drilling part way through as seen here, chisels were used to shape the rest of the notch.

I wanted to make sure the final pieces would fit correctly into the body so it made sense to do some body assembly first.

I started by gluing the back and side walls together as seen here.

While that dried, I glued the chute to its two side walls to form a single piece.

Once the glue was dry, the size of the chute was adjusted using the belt sander to fit tightly inside the body.

With the chute and the candy wheel dry-assembled, I drilled a shaft hole in the front panel to align with the candy wheel. This shot shows me checking the fit.

The next step was to glue in the chute and front panel. But first the back edges of the front panel got bevels to match the construction of the multi-piece sides.

The chute assembly received a dose of glue...

...and the front panel and chute were glued and clamped to dry.

I wanted the funnel to be able to fit closely into the body so now that I had glued-together walls, I could get started on that.

After routing the front edge of the funnel blank (first shot below), its size and positioning on the underside of the top were established by taping it to the top and checking the fit.

I repositioned or applied the belt sander to fix any issues and after only about 600 tries, everything seemed to fit.

The funnel needed a conical inside with a rectangular opening to match the candy wheel. I started by taping the blank to a wood disc mounted to the lathe, turned the cone shape and then cut the opening with a jig saw. The opening was cleaned up with files.

This is the almost-complete oak version of the funnel. I still need to add a hole in the back edge for the assembly key but that will be done later on.

The crank with the associated handle were the last significant bits to be made.

The handle will attach to the crank with a #6 machine screw while the crank attaches to the shaft with a #8 machine screw.

The crank outline was drawn on a small piece of wood as shown here.

The holes were drilled first, then the outline was cut out and lastly the center section was contoured.

This shows a couple shots of finishing up the crank.

The knob mostly consisted of a shaped hollow shaft. in this photo, the center screw hole is being drilled on the lathe.

This shows everything shaped and sanded with the handle screw in place.

The handle hole was lined with brass tubing to let it spin freely on the screw threads and the crank hole was threaded to accept the end of the screw.

A couple little details remained. The first of them was the key that locks the top in place - just a round shaft with a flat handle.

Like that.

I would also need the short little side walls for the chute where it extends past the front panel. Those were just cut to shape and sanded as seen here.

I decided I needed some strengthening of the funnel piece since the key hole was close to the edge and might not be very strong. I glued on a cross-grain reinforcement piece to increase the strength and then made a cut-out to match in the candy wheel assembly.

And lastly I wanted to mark the shaft lock pieces. It turned out that the shaft wasn't perfectly centered in the case, meaning the lock had to be inserted with a particular orientation. The marking was to be a dark dot on the shaft lock and adjacent case piece. I found a conveniently-octagonal piece of African Blackwood which was rounded by sanding while spinning in a drill. That was glued into an appropriately-sized hole and then later sanded flush.

The case needed to be attached to the bottom. For a more secure joint I drilled holes in the corners and used dowels to connect the case and bottom. In this shot it's just waiting around for the glue.

The little walls for the chute were also glued on and sanded flush.

The last bits to go in were the candy wheel assembly and front spacer. They were both touched up on the belt sander for a good fit and glued into place.

This photo shows the top where the wheel assembly and front spacers can be seen. The shaft lock is also in place showing the orientation mark.

Then with the crank and handles screwed on, the tops levered into place and the jars threaded in, they are looking mighty complete.

Now I kept meaning to get out and buy a selection of candy so I could see how various parts worked but I never seemed to get around to it. But with both dispensers built, delay was no longer an option.

The first store I visited had a limited candy selection so I ended up getting just Skittles and generic jelly beans. Here the biggish bag of jelly beans has been decanted into the jar, which I'm screwing on to the oak dispenser.

Then it was time to turn the crank and watch the magic happen!

Only the magic seemed to be is short supply; After one or two small loads, the candy often formed a bridge over the opening so no more candy would come out without some shaking of the whole dispenser.

This shot shows some Skittles caught in the act of forming a bridge above the opening of the candy wheel.

And the jelly beans were even worse. As an illustration, here the candies in the neck came out but the rest jammed up the 3" opening.

So then it was a question of how to fix the candy-jamming problem. I tried enlarging the opening of the funnel but that had little effect. I was somewhat constrained by the fact that unless I was going to drill out the bulk of the glued-in workings, I'd need to work with what was already in place.

I eventually came to the realization that the candy needed to be disturbed to break up the bridges. I considered a few techniques of doing this including this overly-elaborate cam-activated rocking mechanism which thankfully didn't get any further than the drawing board.

Then while going through a checkout at the grocery store I spied this tiny little Dubble-Bubble machine.

I wondered what they did about jams, and a peer in through the opening seemed to show a flat piece that I imagined would sweep through the gum balls with a turn of the crank to break up jams.*

Hey - that would be a simple way to do it!

So then I looked to make a sweep-through-the-jam arm that could be integrated into the existing design. I couldn't see a narrow wood arm being strong enough so I decided to use steel, which could connect directly to the candy wheel. I also wanted the arm flush with the wheel front so I needed the wheel to be a bit thicker to accommodate that. These shots show the blank for a new wheel on the lathe and then a shallow slot for the 0.02"-thick metal arm being cut into it.

The arm length was limited by the internal size of the body so it remained fairly short. This photo shows the arm protruding past the wheel in the oak dispenser.

It turned out that the dispenser with the arm in place worked better but not as well as I liked. I thought it might improve operation if the arm was right beside the candy wheel hole so dislodged candies could drop right in.

I needed more metal structure than just an arm to have it protrude in the center of the opening. To achieve that I used a full metal disc. In this shot I'm cutting out one of the discs whose edges will then be further smoothed with grinder and files.

The original metal arm was made from stainless steel but I didn't have enough for this piece - a guy can only have so much scrap in his basement. Instead I used 0.02" galvanized steel which was subsequently polished to make it look a bit less galvanizey.

Here the disc is in place in the oak machine.

This setup ended up working fairly decently so I thought I should do some more-thorough testing.

I rounded up my test candies (leaving out the peanuts since I figured they'd stain my unfinished wood) and started seeing what proportion of crank-turns would yield candies. If I could get candies by reversing the turning direction of the crank or wiggling it back and forth, that was OK - as long as I didn't need to shake the dispenser.

So that ended up working pretty well, although I wouldn't call it flawless. However given the potentially large size of candy bridges and the wide possible variety of candies it seemed unlikely that I could ever achieve a state of flawlessness. So by the power vested in me, I declared it Good Enough. BTW, the jelly beans and Smarties were the worst with the other three goodies being somewhat more free-flowing.

The machines needed to be finished inside and out so the first thing to do was to pull them apart back into their component pieces.

In this shot everything is apart with the candy crumbs vacuumed out and some final sanding done.

I used wipe-on varnish since the layers are thinner than the normal version and less likely to create interference problems and drips.

I used a brush as seen here for initial application and then wiped with a cloth to thin out and even the coats.

The penalty of using a hard finish like varnish is that it must be roughed up between coats. And the more complex the part, the larger the posterior pain index.

This shot shows me starting with the roughening of the first coat of varnish. I use #0000 steel wool which gives a very fine roughening but also creates lots of dust. The next step is to vacuum all the pieces thoroughly to remove dust and then finally to use a tack cloth to remove any last bits before it is ready for the next coat.

The machines received three coats of varnish and here they are completed at the end of that process.

I wanted to ensure it was possible to address some internal issue like a candy jam. To that end, the top and inner works can be disassembled for repair/cleaning/curiosity reasons. The photos below show how the machine comes apart.

Re-assembly is just the reverse of the disassembly process. The only issue is that the shaft key usually needs to be inserted with the aid of tweezers as seen here.

The shaft lock goes in with the dots aligned. This will be obvious since it would probably need a hammer to go in the other way.