Well this is not really a project of the day, since it has been a couple of months in the making. And came together today.
My 14 year old grand daughter asked me if I could help her with a science fair project that would be due in April 08, 2016.."Why sure, what is it?". I want to make a demonstration of how a canal river lock works. One of the historic Canadian Rideau river canal locks.... Sure that is fine..."with water". omg. How can one resist.
So for the past number of weeks I have been mentoring her on the use of my shop equipment. I made the original plans since I knew the travel limitations of my bandsaw, mill and lathe, so scaled the lock accordingly.
Since it had to be water tight we decided to make it out of acrylic, and put everything together with welding solvent.
The project involved machining of acrylic, brass, aluminum and steel. She learned to be comfortable with the lathe, mill, small rotary tool grinder, and a number of hand tools, including taping and cutting external threads with dies.
Today we finished off the lock push rod crabs. When I told her that we needed to drill a hole in each crab for the tension pin...she said ok.. put them one at a time (there are 4 of them) in the mill vise, used the centre drill, then followed up with the final bit without my supervision.
Although the final outcome is what she has been waiting for, for me it was the journey. She has been like a sponge, totally involved and wanting more.
The model working lock is about 22" wide and 10" overall high. Here are a couple of pics;
David