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- May 7, 2023
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- 2,242
Cant rotate pics right now, so just crane your neck if their not orientated correctly.
Now on to the hand wheel proper.
I looked high and low for a decent, cheap cast iron hand wheel for this project and could not find anything “cheap” that was anywhere near “good” so I had to actually spend money.
Everything I found for a decent price was either an old quality hand wheel that would need extensive clean up and fitting or new production units that were in a vaguely round shape.
Found this really nice (Seriously really nice) one from a company I’ll mention as soon as I remember their name. It was $80 with shipping, but worth every penny.
Even with this being nice it’s still a cast and hand finished part, so it took a lot of indicating and fretting (fettling for you “Chap”) to get it within .005 of Od to Id but I figure that should suffice.
First order was boring out the hub from .375 to .395, or 10mm if you need that pesky kind of metrology.
I set it up with a carbide insert/carbide shank boring bar and went at it.
I used pin gauges to sneak up on the final size, and stopped with a tight slip fit on an .394 under pin. 10 monkey-meters works out to something like .39372547904321 or some such.
With that done I moved on to the less delicate part, bringing the outside of the hub to size and squaring the face with the newly formed bore.
Meager beginnings.
And the finished hub brought to size at .900.
Checking the DDR adapter for fit I found I had just about. 001 Clarence. Perfect to fix it with a bit of the green elixir.
Here you can see the adapter in place with the DDR in on it and you can see the gap for the dial adjusting springs.
And the final product in place.
A neat benefit of this was that the new hand wheel is dished more and allows more room for my fat fingers to get between the hand wheel and tail stock to make adjustments easier.
There’s about 3/8” more wiggle room.
I still need to cut a keyway in the hub, as I’m waiting for the key cutter to arrive, so it’s not quite done, but good enough to try out.
Overall I’m stoked with how this turned out, and how much better the lathe looks with the new hand wheel. It’s amazing how smooth the operation is with the screw supported by 3 bearings and how much better balanced the entire tail stock is with the extra weight opposite the chuck.
I was undecided as to wether replace the carriage wheel with this exact same one, but I’m pretty sure my mind is made up on that now.
Now on to the hand wheel proper.
I looked high and low for a decent, cheap cast iron hand wheel for this project and could not find anything “cheap” that was anywhere near “good” so I had to actually spend money.
Everything I found for a decent price was either an old quality hand wheel that would need extensive clean up and fitting or new production units that were in a vaguely round shape.
Found this really nice (Seriously really nice) one from a company I’ll mention as soon as I remember their name. It was $80 with shipping, but worth every penny.
Even with this being nice it’s still a cast and hand finished part, so it took a lot of indicating and fretting (fettling for you “Chap”) to get it within .005 of Od to Id but I figure that should suffice.
First order was boring out the hub from .375 to .395, or 10mm if you need that pesky kind of metrology.
I set it up with a carbide insert/carbide shank boring bar and went at it.
I used pin gauges to sneak up on the final size, and stopped with a tight slip fit on an .394 under pin. 10 monkey-meters works out to something like .39372547904321 or some such.
With that done I moved on to the less delicate part, bringing the outside of the hub to size and squaring the face with the newly formed bore.
Meager beginnings.
And the finished hub brought to size at .900.
Checking the DDR adapter for fit I found I had just about. 001 Clarence. Perfect to fix it with a bit of the green elixir.
Here you can see the adapter in place with the DDR in on it and you can see the gap for the dial adjusting springs.
And the final product in place.
A neat benefit of this was that the new hand wheel is dished more and allows more room for my fat fingers to get between the hand wheel and tail stock to make adjustments easier.
There’s about 3/8” more wiggle room.
I still need to cut a keyway in the hub, as I’m waiting for the key cutter to arrive, so it’s not quite done, but good enough to try out.
Overall I’m stoked with how this turned out, and how much better the lathe looks with the new hand wheel. It’s amazing how smooth the operation is with the screw supported by 3 bearings and how much better balanced the entire tail stock is with the extra weight opposite the chuck.
I was undecided as to wether replace the carriage wheel with this exact same one, but I’m pretty sure my mind is made up on that now.
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