The Creation of a Turret Clock

We have a key...

  Today marked a major milestone.  I was able to finish the key.  I started by removing a fair amount of excess metal from the key.  Not wanting to repeat previous mistakes, I had intentionally left a lot of extra metal.  After sawing some of the metal away, I used a file to do the cleanup.  It was a kind of funny because I had gotten so used to the small files that the real sized files almost removed metal too fast.  If I hadn't been paying very close attention, I could have easily removed too much.

  The final delicate work that I had to do really had me being anxious.  I was very worried about screwing it up.  One little mistake and 15+ hours of work would have been in the trash...  I had to form two teeth on the end of the key (I think they somewhat look like the fangs on a snake).  This involved removing the metal on either side of the teeth, between the teeth and then putting a curve in the teeth so that they could pass through the slide easily.  After some careful filing and even more careful heating, I was able to get the teeth into position.  My greatest fear was that I would try to bend the teeth when the key was too cold.  It would have been very easy to snap the teeth off.  But, everything came out okay.

  Next I did some cleanup filing on the body of the key.  This was fairly straightforward.  A lot of filing and a little hammer work but nothing too stressful.  Finally, put a few coats of oil on the key and burnt the key to give it a nice black finish.  The pics below show the key in action.  Notice the color of the key from the cooked oil...  Makes you wonder where the term blacksmithing comes from...  :)



Next, the key is rotated into the unlock position.  The teeth go through the holes in the lock, while the wards(the cross shaped pieces of metal) on the plate go into the key.  If you notice some spots on the wards, these are paint marks I put on them to make it easier to eyeball the filing of the key.  The wards are just under 3/16" wide.



Final pic is the backside of the slide showing the teeth coming through.  They will push a spring out of the way to unlock the chest.