A few more rods to do. I won't be showing them all as it is a waste of good space, but I will be showing a few things I did to get them made.
These are the rods that need making, and again a little bland to look at.
There is one at 1/8" thick, that is the operating rod from the cam, two from the cross shaft at 1/16" thick and two going up to the graphite block, again 1/16".
The two offs are actually handed pairs, but can be made up as a pair, then the handing put on afterwards. So to make sure they match, I will join them together, machine and shape them as one, then split them apart.
The first job needed is to solder the two 1/16" plates together.
This is my soft solder joining kit. The small G clamps are not used unless the two plates start to wander apart.
The first job is to coat each face with flux, then by hitting the soft plumbers solder between a clean hammer and a hard place it is got to about 0.005" thick. Using scissors, little pallion strips are cut off the flattened solder end and placed along one of the fluxed faces.
The other plate is placed on top, flux face to the solder and the whole lot gently heated until the solder flowed and then allowed to cool down naturally, do not quench, as it will suck water into the joint and be liable to fail, that goes for all soft soldering jobs.
Soft solder is fairly fluid, even when set, so if the plates are slightly out of line, I put them into the vice edge on and realign them, followed by flat faces and then a good squeeze. These were fairly close, so they aligned really nicely. If they are way out, they need to be reheated and got more into line, that is when I would use the G clamps, while the solder is still hot and liquid. I find it stays that way for quite a while, as the main metal cools down.
A working measurement was required to make the thicker plate, so I needed to get it so that I could measure between two centres at different heights. With a little bit of thinking, the figure was obtained. The edge of the small mag stand was set on centre of the lower one, the small square onto the upper one, and the ruler taking the measurement. 1/32" is plenty close enough for this piece.
The bar that had been soldered up was cut into the two required lengths, then by drilling on the mill I got all centres thru with a 1/16" drill.
After bluing up, my rough sketches were laid out onto the plates. All the holes were then opened up to 1/8".
The next job was to make up a pair of filing buttons. These were made from a piece of 1/4" silver steel (drill rod), drilled down the centre with a 1/8" drill then parted off at about 1/8" thick. Then they were heated up to orangy red for about 30 seconds and then dropped into a tub of cold water. They came out glass hard, just what is needed, and no need to clean them up. A short 1/8" spindle was made up out of a piece of unhardened silver steel.
This is how they work. One either side of the bit to be filed to shape and then the spindle is rested on top of the vice jaws as the vice is tightened up, trapping the part between the two buttons.
You then file downwards until you can file no more, the buttons are so hard, if you carry on, your file will soon be buggered. Just file around the buttons until the ends become very nicely radiused, taking on the shape of the buttons.
It only took a couple of minutes to get these done, then it was onto the mill to split the drawn lines, as shown in previous posts, then a little hand filing to blend things together.
If you notice, there is only one filing button here, the other shattered when I tightened up the vice on one of the other plates, so I had to rely on my ability to keep the file level while going down to size.
The extra holes in the centres of the rods will actually have small steel decorative finials fitted (6 off overall), just to finish them off.
Pivots, torque rod and springs next.
Bogs