First tooth!

  I got a bit of time in with the clock today.  I started by doing some completion work on the chisel that I will use for cutting waste between the teeth.

  This is the method that I am using to cut the teeth.  It starts by cutting the sides of the teeth.  These cuts are about 1/2" deep to give an idea of the size.



This is followed by gently heating the area. I have to be very careful because it would be very easy to burn the teeth away.  After heating, I use the chisel to knock out the waste.  This picture shows what it looks like unheated.  It is hard to tell from the photo but the backside of the chisel is flat so that the bottom of the gap between the teeth will be flatter and need less cleanup filing.



After cutting the first tooth, I went ahead and started cutting the remainder of the teeth.  So far, I have about 10 teeth cuts made.  I hope that by the end of this week, all the cuts will be made and I can pop out the waste.  This is followed up by cleanup filing.  Also notice to the right of the photo is a spot where I popped out the waste material.  It really worked like a charm.



On a final note, as I was marking out the teeth, I did notice a few small problems.  Hopefully it will not cause me problems but even if it is unusable, I am planing on cutting all of the teeth just for the practice.

Gear cutting has started

Today (betwen the many rainstorms) I was able to finish centering up the gear.  I am hoping that everything will be okay.  It looks pretty good but I will not know for sure until it has to rotate against another gear.

After getting everything centered and cleaning up the outer diameter, I decided to start cutting the gear.  I did not have the camera with me due to all of the rain but I will take some pictures during the next session.  This particular gear is going to have 100 teeth.  The start of the process was to use a divider to create 10 equal arcs on the gear.  From there, those were divided in half.  Each of those arcs should contain 5 teeth.  I am able to use the divider to evenly divide this into 5 pieces.

So, after placing a small mark, I use a small wooden pattern to mark the cutout for the teeth.  After scribing a small line, I then took the hacksaw and cut the sides of the tooth.  The waste material is still in place.  If the rain stops and I can get the forge going, I will then heat the gear up a bit and use a chisel to knock the waste material out of the way.

In all honesty, if not for the rain, I probably could have gotten a lot done on the gear today.  Oh well...

On a final note, I did make a minor mistake.  The clock that I am reproducing only had 96 teeth on the main wheel, not 100.  The 96 is probably because it was easily evenly divided to very small numbers which makes it easy to mark for cutting.  I just made a little goof as I was thinking of my original wooden clock.  It really is not that big of a deal.  Extra teeth on this wheel will not hurt me.

Finally setup my new toy...

  Well, last Christmas season I had gotten a new Grizzly belt grinder/buffer.  For those not familiar with them, they are essentially a large vertical belt grinder/sander with a buffing wheel off to the side.  It is used by a lot of people for making knives but it reality it is just a good, all around grinder.  Well, because of some bad stuff and being busy, I never set it up.



  To give an idea of size, the belt is a 72" loop.

  Today I finally got around to putting it together.  Other than some poorly written directions combined with bad illustrations, I soon had it up and running.  The first thing I tried it out on was my gear from last week.

  For the gear, I need to smooth the outside down before I can gut the gear's teeth.  I will also need to true the gear up to be a perfect circle (at least on the outside) when rotating around the arbor.  Up until now, I was planning on doing it with a lot of filing and some work on the old bench grinder.

  I cannot say enough how surprised I was by the efficiency of the Grizzly.  It really smoothed the outside down fast.  It is not trued up to a circle yet, I was just removing some of the bumps.  But this will really be a labor saver.

  For those few that have been following my blog for more than a few months, you know that it is very important to me that I make this clock using mostly traditional techniques.  In the middle ages, the work of the Grizzly would have been done my a traditional grinding wheel.  Although I have one being held by a friend for me, I will still need to make an assembly to hold the wheel and allow me to power it using a foot pedal.  That is a way's off.

  I hope that before the clock is complete, I get a chance to finish one of the gears using the traditional grinding wheel.  But until then, the Grizzly sure is fun...  :)

Things getting a bit hairy...

  I forgot to mention that I did get about 15 strands of horse hair for the clock.  A friend gave them to me last Friday.  These will be used to suspend a portion of the clock that needs to swing freely.

  Anyone know how much weight a single horse hair can hold?  Maybe I will have to google it....  :)

Gear mounted

  On Friday, I managed to get some more work in.  I decided that since I did not have dividers that were big enough to verify the wheel was centered, I put small extensions on the end of the divider and I was able to use this to verify everything was nice and centered.

  I started with bending the tabs over to secure the hub,spokes and wheel together.



This turned out to be a nice tight fit.  Next came the arbor.  Since the arbor is square where the gear attaches, I need to use a square punch.  To line it up, I drew lines down the center of the spokes.  Then the corners of the punch were placed on the lines to properly center it.  This picture shows the placement of the punch.



After placing the punch, I then used that as a guide to tap 4 divots in the hub.  This would allow me to properly place the punch after heating.  The divots marked the corners and I used that to start punching the hole.  A bit more of "beauty shot" is shown here.  This is after the first 2 or 3 punches.  Coal dust has gathered in the punched area.  Look for the darker square in the middle of the fire.



When I had punched the arbor about 25% through the hub, I placed the hub over a bolster plate (flat piece of metal with a hole in it that matches what you are trying to punch) and I was able to easily push the remaining material out.

Finally, after punching the arbor hole, I put the new gear on the arbor to try it out in the clock frame.



If you look carefully, there is a square washer on both sides of the gear on the arbor.  This helps to keep it perpendicular to the arbor.

It looks pretty good.  I need to tilt the gear a bit.  However, the gear does seem to be a lot more centered then my first attempt.  The variance seems to be at a maximum of 1/4" with the average being under 1/8".  That is about the best I can really hope for.

After doing just a bit more cleanup, the next step will be the grinding of the outside to get it nice and round.  After that, maybe I can finally start cutting the gear.

As an added note, in future gears, I will punch the arbor prior to mounting the hub and spokes in the wheel.  I had to constantly restraighten the spokes while I was doing the punching.

More spoke work

  Another good day at the forge...

  Today's goal was to prepare the spokes for placing them into the wheel.  The first step is to split the ends of the spokes.  This starts with cutting a slit using a hacksaw.

    

After the slit is made with the saw, the end is heated and the split open using a chisel followed a wedge then hammered open.

     

After splitting all four ends, I did some filing on the inside of the wheel and with a bit of hammer tapping, the wheel has a new set of spokes.



The tabs on the end of the spokes will be heated and bent over to grab the wheel.  This will create a very firm connection.

I decided to hold off on bending the tabs over.  I want to make sure everything is nice and centered.  I measured with a ruler and from the center, the variance is no more than 1/8" from what I measured.  This means a minimal amount of filing to get the circle trued up.  However, using a ruler to do this is not the best check.  I need a large pair of dividers to confirm that everything is okay.  I thought I had a larger pair but could not find them so I am going to hold off securing the spokes until I can buy a new divider.

Very good session

  I was able to get out to the forge for a few hours today before the rain moved in.  I have not been putting as many photos on here as I have in the past.  I will try to correct that starting today.

  So, my agenda today was to prep the hub and spokes for placement within the outer ring.  For starters, in working with the spokes, I needed to make two marks.  The first mark would indicate where the spoke would meet the outer ring.  The second line was about 3/4" beyond that.  That last 3/4" is split and bent around the outer ring to hold onto it.

  The first step was to find the center of the hub.  The way I approached this was to draw a line down the middle of the spokes and find the intersection point.  After finding the center, I tapped a very small mark at the center for all future reference.



  Next, using a divider I marked two lengths on each spoke for where it will connect to the outer gear.



This picture shows the spokes laying on the outer gear with the mark on the spokes.  I later moved the line a little closer to the center.



This shows the end of the spokes cut but not yet cleaned up.  The white line is an old line and can be ignored.



I noticed something about the wheel at this point.  It was that from the first attempt I had marked a few little divots where the spokes should connect to the wheel.  They had been bothering me so I decided to make a pattern on a piece of steel and compare it to what I had on the wheel.  Notice that at the cardinal points of the wheel there are two hash marks.  Those marks should line up with the lines on the steel.  If you look at the area marked "B" you will notice a problem.



Apparently when I laid the wheel out before, I had improperly placed this point.  This was probably responsible for some of the issues I had with the first attempt.

After notice this problem and correcting it, I also did a little work on the wheel to take out a few little bumps that I had noticed when I mounted the first gear attempt on the clock.  It looks much, much better now.

Finally, the tips of each spoke were heated and hot filed to smooth them and prepare them for some future work.  Part of this filing included rounding over the tips slightly.



I am very, very happy with this effort.  Everything is looking much better than the previous attempt.  I have decided that with the level of caution I am taking, it will be better to punch the arbor hole in the hub prior to mounting it on the wheel.  I will just make it slightly undersized to give me some wiggle room if it is not perfectly centered.

Here is a picture of the wooden pattern I used in the previous session.  This let me much more precisely lay out the spokes then before.  The little "V"s are to let me more easily see where the line is if it is covered up by metal.  The brown area is where the metal was a little warm when held next to the wood.



Finally, I should get a financial kick back for this but a nice little investment...  It is a little rubber lasso that goes around a can of WD40 and keeps the little straw...



 

Deja vu...

  Worked some more on the replacement hub and spokes.  I am really liking the improvement in quality with this one.  To make it easier to have it come out right, I drew the spokes on a piece of wood.  This allowed me to compare my piece to the pattern to make sure it was coming out with nice 90 degree angles.  It also me to make sure all of the spokes were close to the same thickness.

  At this point, the hub and spokes are close to being done.  I need to trim the spokes to length and then put the assembly into the circle of the gear.  Finally, the hub needs to be punched for the clock's arbor.

  Finally today I also removed the first hub and spokes.  It was fairly easy to pop out.  I double checked the outer circle of the gear and it does appear that I can reuse it with the new spokes.

  Here is a photo of the new crossbar.  You may notice at the hub that it appears slightly misshapen.  It is wider across one axis compared to the other.  This is from the forging process.  Once the arbor hole is punched, I may do a bit of filing to even them up.  However, it will have no functional difference on the clock, only aesthetic value.

  Also in this photo you may notice a white tracing line on one side of the circle.  That shows how much material I potentially would have had to file if I had kept the original hub and spokes.

  The bulge on the left side of the circle is the left over from the forge weld of joining the circle together.  Once all filing is done, it should basically be undetectable.

Some more gear work

  Today, I took a look at the hub and spokes I made last weekend and I had used too small stock for the hub so I decided to work on remaking the hub and spokes again.

  So I spent today remaking the hub and spokes using 2" x 1/2" stock.  In some ways, I'm glad to be remaking this a few times.  Each time I am getting better and better at making the hub and spokes.  I am contemplating remaking the outer wheel of the gear but I do not think that will be necessary.

  This week, I am expecting to get much more work in.  My work schedule is such that I should have the afternoons free to do some work.  The only problem is that this time of the year in Florida usually means afternoon rain storms.  If it rains, I cannot work.

Weekend work...

  This weekend was a demo weekend at a boyscout camp.

  I decided to play around with making a new hub and spokes.  Things went pretty well but still a little unhappy with the results so I will probably try again.  Basically, the mistake this time was that I did not leave enough mass for the hub.  I probably could have made it work but decided it was better to just start from scratch.

  On another note, I am not going to take the clock to anymore demos.  I have mentioned quite a while back that I tend to rush a bit when people are watching me and the clock parts are going to get more complicated.  I cannot work on it with people watching.  When I do demos in the future, I will work on smaller, simpler projects.

  Also I did receive some good news from a gentleman that helped me get my original equipment.  I often let him know what things I am looking for and he in turn has a gentleman in Pennsylvania that looks for the equipment.  Well, he managed to secure a large round sharpening stone for me.  It is about 2' diameter.  I will have to make the stand for it but that is not a big deal.

  One of my goals has always been to have a more authentic setup.  The sharpening wheel will be a good addition...  I pick it up on Tuesday.