Fred R Clark & Son Machineworks

[Nitro]

The "Horse" with the hood refitted so I can build a new exhaust for her:

I added a union to it in order to be able to weld a mounting tab to it for additional support and to ease it's assembly.
The muffler can will be pointed towards the ground to help abate the noise.

The carb gasket was destroyed, so time to make a new one.
No gasket material?
Easy enough, a cardstock box will suffice.
Funny how the packing material for the machine holddown kit was able to provide:

Kit:

A 5mm deep well socket was used to punch the holes because it was the right size.

The hardware was used to locate it and a wooden file handle was used to strike it.
We call that dinging a gasket.

Finito, and no run to the parts store either

 

[Nitro]

Red: oil spills
Blue: tiny chip pan

Unsafe, insufficient and ugly
The arrow to the left highlights where an additional tray will be added.

 

[Gerontius]

Oh wow, you guys are actually running it now--this is fantastic, it should look great when it's ready to go.
I don't have any antiques that are THAT cool.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

This is incredible. You need to train an apprentice.

 

[Nitro]

Early Skinner 5 inch 3 jaw scroll chuck.
I did a teardown on it just for general cleaning.
My glass bead cabinet made easy work of removing the slight rust and century old grime to put her back in service.
The unfortunate part of this score was the fact that it only has the larger outer grip work jaws, but it is still something that can be overcome lots of the time with clever fixturing.
The smaller work/inside jaws that are no longer with it are stepped in the opposite direction.

The backing plate is set up to be screwed onto a lathe spindle, so I will likely machine an arbor for it that I can chuck into the 4 jaw on our old Monarch for holding smaller work.
A sixty tooth gear was ordered so I can machine an indexing rig for it for milling machine or even shaper workholding.

The 60 teeth on the gear can be divided into many useful numbers of division which could also serve as a quick spacer with a 100 year old look to it.

 

[Nitro]

Since it was rainy all day, I decided to focus on a project for the machineworks.

The recent chuck refurbishment was a cool project, but it was still useless without an arbor.
Lucky for me, I had a bit of free machining 12L14 steel that had one end already threaded that was used as a thread gauge to make a backing plate in order to use a six inch 4 jaw independent chuck that came with my 10K South Bend lathe.
The South Bend is only a ten inch lathe, so it's spindle has a smaller nose thread which is 1 1/2 -8 threads per inch instead of the 2 1/4-8.
Needless to say, that went well and gave me a little bit more diversity when it comes to work holding.
Keep that South Bend thread dimension in mind later, because I assumed the Skinner chuck to have the same thread.
Oops, measure twice cut once is a saying we use.
This time it bit me on the ass
After indicating the part true, I popped a center hole in her to support it for the rest of the operations.
Rough turning the arbor:

Looking pretty good with a decent finish on the the register area, a clearance groove on the left face and a beautiful 1 1/2-8 thread into their own relief.

I measured the thread over wires with a micrometer and it was a really nice dimension which would offer a really nice fit.
Combine that with the 1 thou clearance on the register and it should work awesome.

Ok, time to physically check the fit.
Dammit to hell, no dice.
Ok, easy enough, re-chase it with more clearance.
Nope, nada, ain't happening.
Easy enough, grab a thread gauge and positively identify the thread.
Nope, not that easy.
Disassemble the chuck to gain access to it's internal thread.
Grab the gauge and locate the 8 TPI leaf.
Nope, it ain't 8 TPI, it is 6.
Dammit.
Only one thing to do now to correct it, turn the big shoulder back far enough to chase a proper thread on it.
Lucky for me that part went quick
Four hours of my life I will never get back ain't a bad trade for something that couldn't be bought.

Here is the finished product:

Now I have an arbor I can chuck in the Monarch to mount a smaller chuck on the old girl.
The bonus round will be the ability to take the chucks from my 922 Logan and mount them up as well.


Remember kids, measure once, cut twice

 

[Nitro]

Cool, today the new arbor arrived for the old Diamond 22 horizontal milling machine.
The spindle taper on the machine is oldschool Brown & Sharpe #9 taper which are getting harder to find tool holders in acceptable condition.
A solution was to upgrade the machine with an ER32 spring collet setup with the correct taper.

ER32 is a modern standardized spring collet system that is suitable for CNC work.
Plenty of grip and highly accurate too.
Hello 1940s, meet the new millenium.

ER32 collets ^
These come in many sizes and are very forgiving if your tools are not an absolute size on their shanks.
The old stuff would wouldn't accept an oversized tool at all and send a smaller shanked tool off to one side which can make it cut oversized, load the cutting edge on one side of the endmill more than the other, or worse yet, pull out of the holder after the set screw worked loose.

End mill ^
Highlighted in an older system Weldon shank flat for a set screw.
Most modern endmills do not use that system, so the spring collets are now more of the norm.
Some CNC machining centers now use shrink fit holders which enters them into a whole new level of precision and balance important to maintaining accuracy and surface finishes with higher spindle speed rates.

We don't need all of that on a dinosaur, so we ain't going there, yet

ER32 arbor bore and nut ^

All that will need to be done now is a sleeve will have to be machined to hide 2022.
I think I'm capable
That is something else that will have to wait until I make my return to the showgrounds in order to finalize the dimensions.

That's all for now kids, see you at the movies.

 

[Nitro]

Yeah, I get it, to most it's just a dirty old gear.
To me, it is the beginning of a very precise 60 position indexing rig.
Spur gears of this type must be very accurately cut in order for them to mesh properly and have a very long life as a wear part.

I can take advantage of that property to make another shop-built piece of tooling that will offer accurate spacing of any number of holes, flats, gear teeth or other operations that are divisible into the number of sixty that will be fixtured into the recent chuck I restored.
The real tool for doing this would likely cost me a small fortune, so I will improvise based on the knowledge of how they work.
I mean seriously, I built a very similar rig for use at home, and it has already delivered the goods, so lather, rinse and repeat as necessary, right?

The slickest part of the deal is that I won't have to modify it in any manner, so it will still be usable as a feeding gear on my South Bend lathe I have in my home shop.

Sometimes it really pays to think outside of the box

 

[Rodafina]

View attachment 91515
Yeah, I get it, to most it's just a dirty old gear.
To me, it is the beginning of a very precise 60 position indexing rig.
Spur gears of this type must be very accurately cut in order for them to mesh properly and have a very long life as a wear part.

I can take advantage of that property to make another shop-built piece of tooling that will offer accurate spacing of any number of holes, flats, gear teeth or other operations that are divisible into the number of sixty that will be fixtured into the recent chuck I restored.
The real tool for doing this would likely cost me a small fortune, so I will improvise based on the knowledge of how they work.
I mean seriously, I built a very similar rig for use at home, and it has already delivered the goods, so lather, rinse and repeat as necessary, right?

The slickest part of the deal is that I won't have to modify it in any manner, so it will still be usable as a feeding gear on my South Bend lathe I have in my home shop.

Sometimes it really pays to think outside of the box

It is a lovely simple shape, full of strength and promise and potential. It is sturdy, it is useful, and it is perfect in its design.

It is as beautiful as the sun setting over the ocean, but far more practical to have in your machine shop.

And it saved you a boatload of cash. Well, that was teamwork between your good thinking and the gear’s good doing.

Truly a remarkable thing.

 

[Nitro]

I took some more items to the shop this morning.
One was a Starrett Last Word mechanical arm indicator that is roughly a century old.
It is still in it's original fitted wooden box it came in, so that makes it even more special.
The arbor for the Diamond 22 was in the box too, but I don't have the collets for it yet, so it too will have to wait.
I'm waiting for the right deal that will give me the most bang for the buck, so once again, patience is a virtue when it comes to not wanting to drain and flush my wallet.

A few more decorations, Americana of course, will adorn more wall space when I take the time to hang them.
The joint is beaming with my take on patriotism, featuring many flags and symbols that represent my country.
In the spring, I have plans to refinish the man door and frame, this time in a nice glossy hunter green with gold trim and lettering.
There is a huge rough sawn curved timber I have slated for a carved sign to draw more attention to the place too.

The grounds were very quiet this morning, and if you listened closely, I'm certain that some of the equipment sleeping outdoors was snoring.
I think I even heard some of the stuff rusting.

It will likely be my last trip up there this year, but sad as it was to leave, the cold will likely deter my return for more work until warmer weather again.

Everything looked fine in the machineworks, all oiled up and wrapped up for the winter.

I can't wait to go play there again, so maybe if we get a reprieve from old man winter for a few days, it will happen sooner than later.
The camping part may occur no matter how cold it gets, since I have my lavishly accomodated digs up there and all.
Nice to have that option, plus it is a getaway where I might not see another human while I am there.
I guess that sometimes the solitude thing there is a heavenly blessing where I get to decompress for a few days.
Plus I suppose at my age it is ok to once in a while just coast instead of working more of my butt off.

Until then kids, always remember, if you measure once, you will cut twice

 

[Nitro]

New Years eve....what to do, what to do?
Sit at home alone and watch movies?
Shudder at midnight when the clownheads fire their weapons into the air?
Na, I had a better idea.
The weather was presenting an opportunity to hang out in another location I love.
Do up some pig and spend the weekend up in my shop.

Ok, that's settled for the pig part, how about a steak on the charcoal grill?

Fudge brownies sound like the hot ticket.
The fresh bread was there for the black forest ham and cheese sandwiches and I had way too many bagged munchies with me too.
Alrighty then, the food gig was handled well but I was
going to need transportation to get to the necessary room, so bust out the Murray

Fred's drilling rig was left to watch over the shop when I had to use the facilities

 

[Nitro]

The digs:

New Years pig plate:

The Machineworks building:
:

Springtime will offer me a chance to clean and refinish the man door.
I'm thinking a nice gold for the door frame with a matching green for the door finish.
The final touch to the door will be gold lettering to highlight what is inside of it.
(all gold in my honest opinion)
I hope to build flower boxes for the perimeter of the building just to ease the maintenance of the lawn and to mitigate the moisture problems from the grass.

 

[Nitro]

While I was there, it only seemed right to repair something.
I first chose to re-level this old hand cranked drill press.
She had a list to her, so it was time to set it up properly.

The power feed on the quill never worked, so after levelling the press, it was time to find out why.
I messed with it about a year and some ago and even had two other brilliant machine restorers take a look at it, but no dice.
As it turned out, a key in it was installed backwards:

The 90 degree bend was supposed to go inside of the hole in this feed engaging collar

The rounded end of the key was to engage splines inside of this outer gear:

Those spur gears have different tooth counts, the inner fixed one with 40 teeth and the outer idler gear having 41.
This feed ratchet assembly has a spur gear that rides both of the other gears as a function of the differing tooth counts:

The key has a flat band spring behind it that secures the key in either an inner most driving position or a disengaged postion when you no longer need the machine to feed.
Simply put, there was no way to get the worm gear to drive the quill sector in order for it to work properly with the key installed backwards.

In the end, after final assembly, I determined that the table support post anchor on the bottom was attached out of alignment.
Most of that was caused by a pattern shift during the casting process that placed the mounting holes out of kilter.
I will first plug the wood then redrill the anchor mounting holes to correct this.
Because it had 100+ years of dirt rust and grime on it, I brought it home to do the necessary resurfacing on it so it would function properly

I go out of my way to preserve the originalty of our stuff, but sometimes function overides form when it comes to machinery.
After the final assembly, I will be able to cut steel with this machine again for the first time it has been in our shop

 

[Nitro]

Much better now, or as we say, close enough for government work

 

[Nitro]

On the mini-project front, this Wilton vise was disassembled in order to mill another register on the highlighted face:

After I engineer the hold down bolt locations, this vise is slated for use on our tiny 7 inch Rhodes shaper:

 

[Nitro]

So while it isn't exactly finished, here is a progress report on a little project that is well on it's way.
The original casting and arbor were rusted tight, so the first step was to free them up a bit.
It required heat from my torch set to free up the wheel binding nuts, but that was met with success.
The two oiler port caps were encrusted with rust, but I was able to get both of them out.

After removal, I form ground a tool to recut the faces on my Logan lathe then proceeded to re-knurl the sides to restore them.
All of the surfaces on the v pulley were pitted badly, so I took slight cuts on all of the rusted areas to clean them up.
All parts including the cast base were derusted in Evaporust.
The iron base was refinished in Rustolium black.

The motor was sourced from another purchase where it was also repurposed from an older well water pump.

It has a great vintage feel about it and the pressure switch has a manual override position on it that can serve as the on-off switch.

Here is is wired with a new to it power cord.
A motor pulley was needed, so instead of trying to locate one, I machined it from a piece of 6061-T6 barstock.

 

[Nitro]

The wood I selected for the base was cupped too bad for the project, so it got back-burnered until I find more suitable material.

One end of the arbor has a left-handed tapered thread for attaching rolled emery cloth wheels while the other end can hold either grinding wheels or as in the case, wire brush wheels.
The new v-belt was sources from Ebay.
When finished, this will not only be a useful tool in the shop, but will still hold the appeal of being vintage equipment brought back to life.

 

[Nitro]

Well it was new toy day today in the 'ville.
I'm now the proud owner of a 5" dividing head.
It came with tons of features and included an adjustable tailstock.
The fits and finished are spectacular on it for a rather inexpensive offshore sourced item.
I bought some tooling from them in the past that was worth every cent I paid for it, so I jumped at the chance to snag this
Those people over in China are quite capable of making very nice products when we aren't squeezing them to make junk.
You can thank the jerks on Wall Street for that happening.

The company that made this is odd for China in it being run 100% by women.
That's a bonus round for them in my book.

Red, 5 inch 3 jaw scroll chuck
Yellow, indexing plates
Orange, tailstock assembly
-------------------------------

Red, indexing pin
Green, indexing plate splitter
-----------------------------------------

By removing the indexing plate, splitter and indexing pin, access can be gained to disengage the 40:1 worm gear drive that rotates the spindle.
The plates have specific numbers of equally spaced holes in them to divide the 360 degrees into finer resolutions.
The splitter serves as an additional interpolation system to fill in spacings that aren't directly divisible with the plates alone.
It does lose a little accuracy at that point in time, but for general shop work, it is close enough to remain inside of most called out tolerances.
--------------------------------------

The chuck can be removed by unthreading it.
From there, access can be gained to a #2 Morse taper bore to hold a dead center.

In this image, the dividing head has been rotated 90 degrees to where it was in the earlier images.
In all, when lowered, it can nod forward ten degrees as well.
100 full degrees of travel that can be located with precision will enable it to do some pretty fancy operations.
Red, 60 degree dead center
Pink, drive dog assembly
Yellow, spindle thread protector
Blue, 24 position quick spacer plate
By disengaging the worm gear assembly, the spindle can be quick located with a simple lever to speed up operations.
-----------------------------------

This is sized for the driver plate, but will require adding a small spot drilled into it to affix the drive to it in a more reliable way.
--------------------------------

The 3 jaw scroll chuck has the exact mounting thread as the spindle of my 10K South Bend lathe, so it can served double duty as well as the dividing head accepting the chucks and faceplates from it.
Just imagine how fancy a setup can get when you add an independent 4 jaw chuck to the mix

The tailstock assembly can be utilized to hold longer work that runs parallel to the machine table axis in both the x and y directions.

The first project for the old Diamond 22 milling machine the next time I go back up there will be to machine table slot registering keys so that the dividing head and tailstock can be quickly located to the machine table without a lot of fussing with a dial indicator.
Work smarter, not harder

That's all for now kids, so until next time, peace out

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

View attachment 91515
Yeah, I get it, to most it's just a dirty old gear.
To me, it is the beginning of a very precise 60 position indexing rig.
Spur gears of this type must be very accurately cut in order for them to mesh properly and have a very long life as a wear part.

I can take advantage of that property to make another shop-built piece of tooling that will offer accurate spacing of any number of holes, flats, gear teeth or other operations that are divisible into the number of sixty that will be fixtured into the recent chuck I restored.
The real tool for doing this would likely cost me a small fortune, so I will improvise based on the knowledge of how they work.
I mean seriously, I built a very similar rig for use at home, and it has already delivered the goods, so lather, rinse and repeat as necessary, right?

The slickest part of the deal is that I won't have to modify it in any manner, so it will still be usable as a feeding gear on my South Bend lathe I have in my home shop.

Sometimes it really pays to think outside of the box

The last thing I have from the property where I grew up is a gear from the pump. I cherish it. Small but very heavy. Still in good condition, even though it's from the 50s or 60s, and it had been through a fire.

 

[Nitro]

It was meeting day for the Association today and we had quite a turnout.

It was great to see lots of our members that showed up and I even got to petition the Association for some railroad ties to make mulched flower beds around the outside of the shop.
They will serve several purposes.
#1 will be to mitigate the weeds and grass from holding moisture against the bottom of the steel siding.

#2 will help protect the building from damages from the mowers.
(The other faces of the building are actually closer to grade than the ones in this image)
#3 will keep vehicles from hitting the building.
#4 give me a place to display a few items outside during the shows.
#5 will be to make the place a little more inviting.

I'm still in the process of making my inside displays as informative and friendly as possible.
I'm going to toss a little modern technology at 'em too, just to make it a little more interesting.

Because I was already in the neighborhood, I stopped by the shop to drop off a part and gather a measurement on the table of the diamond horizontal mill.
Of course L.S. Starrett came along for the ride with some great measuring tools to assure the utmost in accuracy.
(Starrett manufactures measuring equipment that is the benchmark that others try to achieve)

(yep, the aide is going to literally kill me for using the food prep table for a workbench again )
(It's glass, it will clean easy, or sumpin' like that)

Upon arrival back home, I set about making two cylindrical registering keys to locate the new dividing head to the milling table.
After fitting the head to the table and checking it for trueness, I will make two more for the tailstock.
If the alignment of the keys is off by any amount after checking it with a dial indicator, I will make eccentric keys to compensate for any errors.
I decided to use round keys instead of a long straight one because they will be less prone to error from dings and raised areas in the t-slots from the hold down hardware.
Parting tool lathe operation on the first key:

The protruding part of the keys were machined slightly oversized (.002 inch) so that they can be final adjusted to the table on the next trip back.
I can pull that off with a simple hand drill, a bolt, a nut and a flat file
(Fancy tools? We don't need no stinking fancy tools)

So as Porky Pig would say " A beebada beebada beebada beeb, that's all folks!"