Several years ago I designed a tool to service the mainsprings in old, 8 day and antique clocks. These springs are quite strong and can be dangerous to handle. The tool I designed was made mostly of wood and could be duplicated in whole or in part by anyone handy with tools. I have made the drawings available, free of charge, to all who requested them. I also sell complete units and just the metal parts that require metal working tools to fabricate. Today I had to put one together for a customer so I made a few pictures as I went along. Hope some of you find this of interest.
I precut all the parts for several winders at one time and assemble them as needed.
Here is the parts I will be putting together today.
I found the job goes faster if I have a few jigs to help with the repetitive operations. Here is one of my drilling jigs.
Here I have drilled all the necessary holes and countersunk them for flat head screws.
Moving to the assembly bench I have a fixture for holding the parts while drilling pilot holes and screwing the parts together.
Here is another drilling fixture that speeds up making some of the parts.
I have a trim router dedicated to making the mortice for the gear on spring barrels.
At this point I get into machining parts. Actually only one part, the crank/chuck assembly is machined to any extent. I start with a common 0-1/4 tee handled tap wrench which i modify. I remove the tee handle and plug the hole. I then reduce the end to 11/32" so it will press into a 11/32" hole drilled in a 5" piece of aluminum round stock. After trying several different ways of holding the tap wrench on center I finally settled on a split bushing to clamp it in the lathe. It comes in true enough for my purposes each time I chuck one up.
And another view in the lathe.
I turn a spigot for the handle and then pin the handle to the shaft.
Another fixture holds the shaft so I can drill through the center of it and the spigot I turned on the tap wrench so these two parts can be pinned. I drill down through the set screw so it is perfect every time.
And here is the finished winder. I leave the painting to the proud owner as painting/varnishing is not something I do well.
There is a short clip of the operation on Flickr. I hope this link works for those who might be interested. There is no audio with the clip.
http://www.flickr.com/photo_embed.gne?id=3134426494I think I'm done!!!
Joe
