The Oakes Family

Bushings: It was good to get back in the workshop for a few hours. I chucked up a piece of 1/8inch brazing rod to make the bushings for the center axis. After carefully aligning a parting-off blade, I found I could carefully and accurately part off pieces of the right length of 0.13″, just a touch thicker than the main plates. I alternated between a small lathe bit to create the 0.05″ wide reduced diameter, then parting off to create a dozen or so small undrilled bushings. (2 hours)Creed Cutters: The next is to make the gear cutters and tooling necessary to begin making the wheels. I have chosen to attempt the David Creed method for making the cutters, essentially from scratch. Precision is the key here - and the consistent application of good practice. Which is likely to be a challenge.

Shadle Fly Cutters: I started to make the tools to make the creed cutters (2 hours) and then remembered reading an article written by John Shadle at www.onlineclockbuilding.com and especially an article there on cutter making. I re-read that and decided to try to make a fly-cutter. I used a small sawn off disk of water-hardened drill rod, drilled a center hole, stuck it on an arbor and trued it up on both faces (1 hour). I took a 0.1″ diameter piece of drill rod and ground a hemispherical tip on the end, and then ground away half of it to make a cutting tool. I carefully cut the blank cutter into the correct profile. (1 hour)

Total for January: 6 hours + $0
Total so far: 48 hours + $63