POTD- PROJECT OF THE DAY: What Did You Make In Your Shop Today?

Thank you for the kind words.

Small collection... the other one that I love to listen to is from Stevie Ray Vaughan - Tin Pan Alley from the album Couldn't Stand The Weather. Talk about an musician that left this earth too early...

Growing up in Austin, Stevie is one of our treasures as well. As a teen, I spent countless warm summer nights sitting under 100 year old oak trees with cold beer listening to him. It is how the 70's and 80's were done.................................
 
Noticed an interesting detail while pondering how to deal with the worn bushing and how to remove the back bearing.
The casting has an alignment mark, the bushing has a scribed line to line up the oil port and locking screw. Bit of hand fitting going on in 1967

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Going to have to start painting at some point. maybe tomorrow.:)
parts have been warming in the oven for two weeks now

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Going to have to start painting at some point. maybe tomorrow.:)
parts have been warming in the oven for two weeks now
Just wondering, Have you been warming them to deter moisture/rust? Or are you trying to drive oils out of the cast iron?
What temperature?
Also... tell me MORE about your cool oven! Is that bought or homemade??? :encourage:
 
Just wondering, Have you been warming them to deter moisture/rust? Or are you trying to drive oils out of the cast iron?
What temperature?
Also... tell me MORE about your cool oven! Is that bought or homemade??? :encourage:
My garage is about 67 degrees this time of year so the parts get warmed up to 95 to help speed drying.

Oven is nothing sophisticated. Big Chief smoker, amazon $35 temp controller and a little extra insulation. Smokers are cheap and easily obtained in this part of the county.

prototype testing shot

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Are you sure they're well-done yet?


I'm assuming powder-coating? Also, I'm impressed with your masking abilities.
Still a little tough :D
Just paint, there is an internal temperature regulator of 165 degrees. Would want better insulation to go above that.
Thanks on the masking efforts, gives me one more opportunity to delay starting painting. Not that I don't find it a pain but at least you can have a beer and it's relatively oder free
 
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Thank you for the kind words.

Small collection... the other one that I love to listen to is from Stevie Ray Vaughan - Tin Pan Alley from the album Couldn't Stand The Weather. Talk about a musician that left this earth too early...

The system has been put together very slowly over many, many years... reconditioned VPI turntable, used amp from my brother-in-law at a very, and I mean, very low price... He is actually a bad influence (in a good way), lol. Limited space in the office so speakers are not place in the optimal location. But it is just me sitting in front of it listening, so do not care much for that at this point. Maybe I get to place them better when we finally move....
SRV fan here too. Selwyn Birchwood does a great version of Tin Pan Alley as well...worth a listen.
 
I had a little project that kept me busy for a couple days. A fellow sewing enthusiast was lamenting a broken lever on her Elna Supermatic and I realized it was exactly the same failure that the same lever on one of my (three) Supermatics has. So I thought it would be a good challenge to see if I could come up with a replacement for her and I’d be able to use my machine as the Guinea pig.

This is what’s left of my original lever. As you can see it’s pretty small and understandably fragile so small wonder they break. Plus there’s a sliding feature as well which further reduces the available metal. I’m not sure why the sliding feature is there, really, as it doesn’t seem to get mentioned in any manuals I’ve seen so I decided to steer away from that and just make a non-sliding replacement.

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Operation of the lever is pretty basic: it just swings back and forth and engages in one of five detent notches on the chassis trim. This is an illustration from one of my manuals — the lever is identified as part 3.

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My plan was to make a copy of my broken lever but modify the arm portion into an inverted v-shape to engage the detents. Rather than try to whittle this all from thicker stock I decided I would press the “v” into my shape. The chosen metal would be a scrap of salvaged pallet banding which is the closest thing to spring steel that I have kicking around in the right thickness (0.020”). It’s a little hard but with decent tools it drills and shapes easily enough. I cut the shape using my jewellers saw using a photocopied template of the original.

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Usually by the time I get to this point I start getting impatient and start thinking how to makes things go fast! The bottom part of my press die would be a block of aluminum with a little v-groove cut in on the shaper. The top part would be a triangular-shaped bit of steel that was hiding inside a broken drill bit….

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Now how to hold everything in alignment and in the correct position while I pressed it? Need something…..squishy…..like plasticine! So I taped the blank to the block over the v-groove, put three little dabs of plasticine over the blank, pressed my triangle into the clay, and then squished it….

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Worked great! The plasticine held everything in position until the press came into contact and then squished out of the way as pressure was applied.

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And the rest was gravy, as they say. I finished cleaning up the blank, tweaked the springiness a little to solidly engage the detents, and fashioned a knob from some black acetal I had in stock. I think it’ll be okay for the intended use and it’ll be on its way to Portland as soon as I can get it into the mail.

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Thanks for looking!

-frank
 
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