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...