Hi Bryan

I think fabrication in home environment to begin with is a nightmare. I live in a high-rise apartment building so you can imagine a limited amount of woodwork and metalwork one can do.

Now, my rotor appears unbalanced as it is, when I was gluing plastic discs together I think I put too much glue in a layer on one side. Then, because I mounted two bearings on the sides of the rotor and did not have a proper mounting points the whole thing seems to be off axis slightly (heck I'm lucky it spins without too much wobble).

I do not have means to measure any stress except to visually discern that there is some drag happening. I think the better setup is the roller skate wheel one where gravity aids the process.

I suggest you start somewhere, see what kind of materials you can gather and build your first prototype. Finding the right parts sometimes proves to be a real pain - not everyone has a machine shop available to them. Besides, your SSG can't look worse than my first one

From there you will realize mistakes and correct them on your own pretty fast. I was amazed myself with ideas I came up to fix things after the first trial run, even though I had to scourge for parts and come up with all kinds of ways to supplement the lack of real machined components.