J. A. Vance No. 2 ½ Planer Matcher Restoration

Modified on 2018/06/21 21:11 by Joel Havens — Categorized as: Restoration Topics

Foreword

This restoration was originally chronicled on the The Iron Giants: Matcher Resto Race of 2012! on the Old Woodworking Machines Forum.

The Vance 2½ planer matcher was Keith Rucker’s entry into a completion to see who could restore their planer-matcher first.

The Restoration Part 1 (2012)

Jun 03, 2012¶

The matcher that I will be working on does not actually belong to me - it is in the collection of our local museum - the Georgia Museum of Agriculture (formally the Agrirama) in my home town of Tifton, GA. I am going to have to see if I can find some history on this machine from the curator. For at least ten years, this machine sat outside near the museums "bone yard". About four years ago, during an attempt to get the museum’s collections better organized, she got moved under a storage building where she now sits. I have looked at this machine many times over the years as a candidate for restoration, she is for the most part all there and there does not appear to be anything major wrong with her.

The machine that I am talking about is a J. A. Vance No. 2½ Planer Matcher. She basically has four heads - two to plane the top and bottom of a board as it passes through and then two side heads that can either joint the board square or mould a profile on the edge. Commonly, these machines were set up to run tongue and groove such as flooring or panelling all in one pass. Here are some pictures that I took of the machine and uploaded to the Photo-Index on VintageMachinery.org back in 2008: I do seem to recall that there are a few issues with this machine that will make restoration more difficult (but not impossible), I just don't recall exactly what they are. Hopefully this week, I will be able to find some time to run out to the museum and go over her more closely - I will report back then with more information on the machine.

I am looking forward to getting started on this project. While this will not be my first restoration of an antique flat belt machine, this would have to be one of the largest machines I have ever taken on as a restoration project.

Side View of Vance 2½ Planer Matcher

End View of Vance 2½ Planer Matcher

View of Drive Gearing for Vance 2½ Planer

Jun 2012¶

I got out to the museum late this afternoon to take a closer look at the Vance matcher. It has been several years since I have looked at here real close and I remembered that there were some issues with the machine, but I could not recall what all they were. For full disclosure of the problems I will have to overcome, here are what I now consider "known issues" with the machine (and I am sure that I will uncover plenty more when I start digging into this machine):

Bent Countershaft and broken pulley

At some point in time (probably when moving it to the museum), the countershaft on the machine was bent. While not a major problem from the stand point of being able to fix it, the shaft is a pretty large diameter and a good six to seven feet long. Bottom line is that it will be expensive to replace. While I might be able to bend it back straight again, it is so rusted anyway, I will probably just replace. Coupled with the fact that one of the pulleys on this shaft is broken and will need to be replace, I doubt that I would ever be able to get the broken pulley off (along with the ones in its way that will need to be removed to replace it) with the shaft as rusty and pitted as it is. Additionally, I will need to find a replacement pulley for the one that is broken.

Missing Pulley

Here you see a shaft sticking out from the left side of the machine. I am sure that there is supposed to be a pulley on this shaft - I will have to figure out what size it needs to be and find a replacement.

Missing Guide

You can see the guide on the right side of the infeed table. There should also be a guide on the other side that could be adjusted depending on the width of the board being fed into the machine (there are multiple holes in the table to bolt it in place). Of course this guide is MIA - I will need to find out (or possibly imagine) what this looked like and make a pattern to have a new guide cast.

Missing Rollers

In this picture, you see the two uprights at the rear of the machine. These are located directly over the cutter-head that planes the bottom of the board going through the machine. I can only assume that there is a pressure roller that should fit into these uprights to hold the board down as the cutter-head planes the bottom of the board. All that is there are the uprights - I will have to probably imagine how this was all put together and totally re-build this from castings/steel. Also, there are two "hooks" on the very end of the machine - I can only assume that there is a roller that fits into these hooks for the boards coming out of the machine. Again, I will probably have to imagine how this was originally and turn something to work on the lathe.

While the issues that I uncovered today are all by no means minor, it does appear that the rest of the machine is for the most part there - including all four heads. The good news is that I did not see any broken parts that will need to be repaired or replaced. One issue that I do see is that the steel parts on the machines (shafting, heads, rollers, nuts, bolts, etc.) are all severely rusted and pitted. Many, if not most, of these parts will need to be totally replaced. The good news is that the cast iron parts (the majority of the machine) appear to be in pretty good shape all things considered. And, as I said before, I am sure that I will uncover many other unknown problems as I dig into this restoration.

Quite honestly, this is one of my biggest concerns on this restoration - the lack of reference information on J. A. Vance. I spent several hours this past weekend trying to dig up anything I could find on this company as well as any articles, advertisements, catalogues, etc. Unfortunately, my search was not very fruitful. While I was able to add a bit more information on the history of the company history on the Vintage Machinery site, as far as this machine is concerned, nothing really turned up. There are some pictures of a very similar machine to this one (a No. 2 ½ B as compared to my No. 2 ½) in the VintageMachinery.org Photo Index - I am hopeful that I will be able to contact the owner of that machine to use as a reference.

06 Jun 2012¶

On yours I think we may severally be missing what I believe to be a spring lever on the infeed table. Pivoting at one set of holes and locking over pins in the other set. There are few good illustrations and I have mostly seen homemade metal spring set ups. Early ones look like wood. Springy wood. Here is a picture of a similar Vance No. 2 ½ B (mine is just a No. 2 1/2 - no "B") in the VM Photo Index:

Vance No. 2 ½B Infeed Table Rollers

That very well could be a spring bar. Another strong possibility. Here is a picture from the same machine above showing what looks like a pressure plate:

Vance No. 2 ½B Pressure Plate

When I first saw it, I assumed that the roller was missing on this one as well. After your suggestion that it might be a pressure plate, I think that is exactly what was there.

I need to contact the owner of this machine and see if he will let me borrow a few parts to use as patterns to have new parts cast. If not, maybe I can get drawings so that I can make patterns and have parts cast.

07 Jun 2012¶

Fortunately, I can do my own machining since I either own or have access to lathes, mills and other machine shop equipment. My experience with casting is that it is not terribly expensive (through Cattail), but multiple parts can sure add up in a hurry. As to knives, I have made my own out of A2 steel on my milling machine and had them hardened locally, but even then, the A2 is pretty darn expensive - I think I had about $200 tied up in the set of two knives I made for the 24" Fay and Egan planer last year. Cutte-rhead bolts will also be expensive - I have a few new ones on hand, but not enough for the project (and all of the bolts on my machine will need to be replaced). For me, I think that the most expensive part of this project will potentially be belting if I have to purchase new - hopefully, I will be able to recycle most of the belting from the museums stash.

If I am able to finish this project for only $1,000, I think I will be doing real good. Normally, I don't do a good job of keeping up with expenses on a restoration (I usually don't really want to know). For this project, I think I will try and keep good records of both time and money spent on the restoration.

08 Jun 2012¶

Well, today has been a very productive day in researching the Vance matcher. I reported the other day that I found reference to a 1911 J. A. Vance catalogue in the Smithsonian Library. A fellow member here (I will let him tell who it is if he likes) contacted me and told me that he was going to DC in the next few weeks and would volunteer to stop by and try and get copies of the catalogue for me. I sent him the information on the book with a big smile on my face. In the meantime, he contacted the Smithsonian to find out what he would need to do in order to gain access, and the person there instead said that she would just scan a copy for him and save him the effort! So, today, I got scanned copies of the catalogue (which is now also uploaded to the VM site - 1911 J. A. Vance Catalogue)

Unfortunately, the catalogue had four pages missing, and of course, one of those pages was the cut of the No. 2½. But, there were cuts of the No. 3 and No. 3½ - both of which were identical except for the number on the side of the machine and both look identical to my No. 2½. I strongly suspect that the cut for the No. 2½ was also the same. Here is what was in the catalogue related to my matcher:

Vance No. 2 ½ Planer/Matcher catalog description

Vance No. 3 Planer/Matcher left hand side, catalog cut

This will be of great help! The description gives me some critical information such as countershaft RPM, HP requirement and even the length of the belts required. It also shows some of the missing parts on my machine which will be very helpful as I try to reproduce them.

Here is a picture of the other side of the Vance matcher:

Vance No. 3 Planer/Matcher right hand side, catalog cut

10 Jun 2012¶

While out at the museum this weekend, I went and made some measurements on the pulleys and shafts that will need to be replaced on the Vance. Here is a short list of what I know that I will need in case anybody has something in their rathole looking for a home.

The broken pulley on the countershaft is 8-inches in diameter, 6-inches wide, and fits a 2-inch diameter shaft.

The missing pulley on the left side of the machine should match the one that is there on the right - it measures 17½-inches in diameter, 5-inches wide and also fits a 2-inch diameter shaft. This missing pulley needs to be an exact match to the one that is there so the odd-ball size diameter of 17½-inches is an absolute need.

Both of these shafts will also need to be replaced - they are both 2" in diameter by 6-foot and 8-foot long respectively.

14 Jun 2012¶

I squirted two cans of PB Blaster on my machine today. Hardly got it wet....

23 Jun 2012¶

While out at the museum yesterday afternoon, I shot some video of the Vance Matcher. Take a video tour of the matcher here: Vance Matcher Video

29 Sept 2012¶

Well, I know that I told several of you at ArnFest last week that it would probably be November before I would have a chance to get started on the museums matcher. But sitting here reading all of these posts and seeing progress being made by my competitors, I just could not stand by and let anybody get too far ahead of me. So, today, I decided to blow off all of the things that I need to be doing and instead spent the day out at the museum getting started on my machine.

The first order of business was to move the big matcher from the storage building it has been residing in out to the shop area where I can properly work on it. This was no small task in itself - seeing as this machine weighs in at about 2 ½ tons, she is not as easy to move around as a lot of the machines I work on. Using chains and slings, I managed to drag the big matcher from where it sat in storage to the door of the building where I could get to it with the forklift. Because of all of the pulleys and such under the machine, I did not feel good about picking it up with the forks from the bottom, so I instead used several slings to pick it up from the top side, letting it hang beneath the forks. This was SCARY to say the least - 2 ½ tons of cast iron hanging (and swinging) from the bottom of the forks was not a lot of fun - especially since there was about 100 yards of bumpy and hilly terrain to get from the storage building to a decent dirt road to move it the rest of the way. The best part of the whole trip was when I was driving downhill a short piece and the weight of the matcher caused the back wheels of the forklift (the steering wheels) to lift off the ground! I did not have the machine very high off the ground (fortunately) and as soon as the feet touched the ground, the forklift righted itself and I was able to ease down the rest of the hill. Once I got on the road, it was not too bad.

Once at the shop, I sat it down on the concrete pad outside the shop doors. I took an air hose and gave it a good air bath, blowing off years of dust, dirt, leaves, vines, and whatever else was on the machine. It must have been 20 pound lighter after the cleaning!!! Here is what she looked like before I started the tear down:

At this point, the game plan was to just start taking things apart - as the old joke goes, "how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!" - On this machine, it is "one piece at a time." The first part to come off was the big tail shaft - it was just in the way sticking out so far on one side - so it was the first pieces to remove. I was real worried at how easy the bolts would come apart on this machine - while the cast iron parts have held up well, many of the steel parts on the machine are in really bad shape. I am glad to say that so far, most of the bolts have come apart pretty easy - as was the case with the bolts holding the bearing blocks on the tail shaft.

While the bolts came off pretty easy, the condition of the bearings was nowhere near what I was hoping for. When the first bearing cap was removed, I took apart the bearing on the side of the tail shaft closest to where the shaft was bent at some point in time. Unfortunately, it soon became obvious that the Babbitt was in really bad shape and that the bearing shell casting had been broken (probably when the shaft was bent). Not a pretty sight:

I think that I can repair this break, but I might just take the good one from the other side of the shaft and send it to Cattail and have a new one cast. Either way, it should not be too bad to fix. With that shaft off, I also removed the second shaft under the machine. This one went a lot easier and nothing appeared to be too bad. Because I will need to replace the shaft, I will probably have to re-pour the bearings, but they did not look that bad. Next piece to go was the main cutter-head. Again, I removed the bearing caps and saw what was an all too familiar sight - the steel shafts in the Babbitt bearings were again rusted causing a mess. Both sides looked more or less like this:

While working on the cutter- head, I also removed the pressure bar and chip deflector, which was pretty straight forward.

Next on the agenda was taking apart the expansion gears - two sets of them on the two sets of feed rollers. To my surprise, this turned out the be the most difficult part of all day long - while the first set came off without too much trouble, I spent nearly two hours getting the second set apart - the shafts that the gears rode on were very worn, rusted, and pitted. They were in a very hard place to get two and I could not fit a punch or hammer behind them to tap them off. I ended up putting a good bit of heat on them with the torch in hopes that I could get the cast iron to expand a bit and then used various sets of cold chisels as wedges, which I drove between the various parts to separate everything. It sounds a lot easier than it was - for a while I was really wondering if I would ever get these parts apart! Persistence paid off, and after way too long and way too many swings of a pretty big hammer (I was worn out), I was finally successful.

At the end of the day, I had spent 8 hours at the museum working on getting parts off of the machine. I was hot, dirty, sweaty, smelly (real smelly!) and nearly exhausted. It was not too bad this morning, but we hit right at 90 degrees today with pretty high humidity - the heat and hammering had really taken the life out of me. The expansion gears really slowed me down and I have to say that I was disappointed in the amount of progress that was made today. But in reality, I am glad that this part is behind me - at least I am started now and no matter when I did get started, it would have taken the same amount of time to accomplish what I did. Still a lot of parts to get taken off before I can start cleaning things up and putting them back together though...

Here is a shot of the machine with a few things removed:

And here is a shot of everything that was taken off today:

30 Sept 2012¶

After looking at my competitors progress over the weekend, I could hardly sleep last night! So today, even though I did not have time, I managed to carve out a couple of hours this afternoon to sneak over to the museum and try and make a little more progress. Fortunately for me, today, things seemed to come apart easier than they did yesterday - that expansion gear mess yesterday just really bogged down my progress. Today, I managed to remove both of the top feed rollers from the machine along with a half dozen or so other little things that needed to be removed. Still a ways to go to get her stripped down, but at least she looks like some progress was actually made with the rollers gone. Here are some pictures of where we are as of now:

Next order of business will be to remove the two big gears that drive the bottom feed rollers. I am scared to death of trying to get them off - you can tell that they are really rusted in place and the key on each pulley look like they were driven in with a hammer so I am sure they are wedged in. I drilled out as much of the key stock as I could without messing up the key ways, but even then, they are still tightly in place, judging from my troubles with the expansion gears, I hate to think how bad these will be.

I am trying to come up with a good game plan on removing the gears. Because of the size of the hubs and the five curved spokes, a regular gear puller will not come close to fitting. I have in my mind a plan for how I might build a custom puller for these specific gears, but that too will eat up my precious time I have to work on this project.

I am working on this at the restoration shop at the museum. We basically have two sets of track that come in from the museum's railroad line so that we can keep our locomotives under shelter as well as have a good place to work on them. In one of the pictures, you can see the 1917 Vulcan Iron Works 0-4-0 on the left (our operational steam locomotive) and the 1924 Porter 0-4-0 on the right - a future restoration project.

As for the icing on the cake, I have not filled you guys in on that one yet. We are working on a rail cart that I can set the entire matcher on so that I can roll it in and out of the shop on the tracks - and even better - over one of the pits that we have under shop floor that will allow great access to the bottom of the matcher for working on the side heads and other parts beneath this monster! Still have a few bugs to work out of that part of the deal, but hopefully the museum staff will have that old cart pulled out of the weeds and ready for me to set it on when I get back...

06 Oct 2012¶

The first order of business was to remove the two big gears that drive the feed rollers. I tried last week to use a regular gear puller to get them off, but because of the way the back of the hub was shaped and the wide area around the spokes, I was unable to get them to hook behind the gear as I would like. So, this past week while I was on the road, I worked out a plan in my mind on how to get them off. I really like pressing shafts out of pulleys and such using either a hydraulic press or an arbor press, and I decided to adapt a similar method to this job. Using some ½-inch thick plate steel, cut out a half moon shaped piece to fit on the back of the gear and cut a a slot on the flat side to fit over the shaft. Nothing fancy, I just used a cutting torch to cut the parts out and a grinder to knock off the rough edges. I then used a piece of chalk to trace around the spokes with the piece in place to figure out where I could fit some bolts through from the front side. I then drilled and tapped four ½" x 13 holes to thread the bolts into. Four matching holes were drilled through a rectangular piece of steel.

My plan was to use a hydraulic jack between the center of the shaft and the back plate - which was bolted to the puller plate on the back of the gear. I quickly ran into a problem though - I had forgotten that most hydraulic jacks do not work while lying on their side. No problem though, I remembered that the museum had a hand operated hydraulic cylinder as part of a pretty cool jacking set. I had to extend my bolts longer for the cylinder to fit using threaded rod, but it was basically the same idea as before. Here are some pictures to give you an idea of how it all worked:

The first gear came off with little effort. The second one was a good bit more stubborn. I had really put a lot of pressure on the cylinder and nothing had moved - we had the cylinder pretty much maxed out and I was afraid that the gear would shatter at any time. So, I resorted to putting some heat on the gear with a torch. The idea being if you apply some heat to the hub on the gear, the heat would cause it to expand just ever so slightly - you of course want to heat up the outside hub without heating the shaft. After just a few seconds of applying heat, I heard a nice sounding "POP" and the gear was moving. I cut the torch off and she just came right off with little pressure from the cylinder the rest of the way.

All in all, it took me about 2 hours to build the puller and get the two gears off. Not to bad of a start for the morning!

From there, I just continued removing parts from the machine, one piece at a time. The bottom feed rollers were removed (with the help of a forklift providing the heavy lifting - each of these feed rollers alone on this machine weigh on more than a lot of the OWWM we see here!) The upright guides came next, followed by the infeed and outfeed tables and the bottom cutter head. LOTS of other small pieces were removed along the way as well. While the description above is not that long, it was slow and tedious work - struggling to get old rusted bolts removed (a few of which were broken in the process, ARUGH!!!). Because of an evening event my wife and I are planning to attend, I had to start cleaning up midafternoon and was on the road back to the house a little after 3:00. The machine is starting to look a lot more naked now:

Unfortunately, I have another long week of traveling at work this week as I have a meeting to attend in Oregon. My manager was gracious enough though to let me take a couple of extra days off work toward the end of the week though and I am planning on taking advantage of this rare opportunity for me to be in the Pacific NW to do some sightseeing and visit with a few OWWM'ers while I am in the neighborhood. That part I am looking very much forward to!!! But, this will mean that I will once again not be able to do any work on the matcher project until I get back home late next weekend (Saturday - my most productive day for OWWM work - will be a travel day this coming week).

Next on the agenda is to get the side heads off as well as the whole elevation mechanism for the top cutter head. Both are pretty complex mechanisms and everything is really rusted in place. I am anticipating the better part of a day just finishing up getting those parts off. After that, I can start cleaning up and painting the main casting and then start cleaning up the smaller parts and putting it all back together - one piece at a time...

15 Oct 2012¶

Today marks a couple of milestones for me in the restoration of the Vance!

1 - Since I left ArnFest about a month ago (the official start of this race), I have spent more nights in a hotel than I have my home. Work related travel for me seems to come in cycles where about all I do is travel and then where I am home for quite a while. For the rest of this year, I only have a bit of traveling left - my annual duck hunting trip (personal time, not work) in November, our annual results meeting the week after Thanksgiving, and a three day meeting in Charleston in Dec. Other than that, I am HOME for a while.

Now that I am back home again, I can get back into a more normal schedule of work and play - and play for me means restoring this machine. In other words, so far, I have been working at a snail’s pace since I was not in town to spend my spare time restoring. Even though, I managed to get a good bit done.

2 - Today, I spent about three hours after work out at the museum on the machine. She is now officially stripped down! All of the parts are off of the main frame of the machine!! This is a huge milestone because now that everything is off, I can actually start restoring.

Here are some pictures of what was accomplished today:

The above picture shows the upper bearing cap on one of the side heads. The thing to note is the condition of the steel parts - look at the bottom left bolt head. Half of it was basically rotted away from rust! That seems to be a common thread on this machine, the cast iron parts are in great condition but the steel parts are pretty much going to have to be replaced. Also note the acme threaded adjustment screw that goes through the head (which is used to adjust its position on the machine to adjust for various width of boards). While the side in the picture is pretty rusted, what you cannot see is the back side of it, which apparently was in the shade and nearly rusted away. No chance of saving either of these pieces - I had to torch the one bolt head off (once removed, the rest of the bolt was easily removed with a pair of pliers) and the screw had to be cut to get the heads out.

Next is what the shaft in the bearing looked like on the side heads when I took the caps off. Any oil that was ever in this machine was long gone by the time I started this restoration. I have never seen shafts that were so bad. I will basically have to re-make both of the shafts for the side heads as the part you see under the bearing cap was actually some of the better looking parts of the shaft...

So, here is the naked frame of the machine. That is a sight that I have been waiting to see for a long time now! Next on the agenda is to start the process of cleaning this part up and putting on a coat of paint. If all goes well, I will start that on Tuesday after work! The main frame of the machine is actually in pretty good shape - you can even see some of the original paint (I think that the only part of the machine that ever saw any paint was just this frame). I will clean this part up with twisted knot wire wheels on my angle grinder. A lot of surface area to clean up, but I think it will go pretty quick. I hope to have this part painted by the end of the week.

In case you are asking where all of the other parts are, they can be found in this pile:

These will be cleaned up one piece at a time, painted, and put back on the machine. I will use a mixture of processes to clean these parts up including wire wheels, sand blasting in my blasting cabinet, and probably spooging on some of the table surfaces and machined parts. Nearly all of the steel parts will have to be machined new on the lathe or mill and all of the Babbitt bearings will have to be re-poured. In other words, a LOT of work left to be done.

But now that I am back in town and able to focus on getting real work done, the other guys better look out - I may be slightly behind the lead horse right now, but so far, I have only been able to run about a quarter of the time. We are about to put this thing in high gear. Oh, did I mention that I have two weeks of vacation time left that I have to use before the end of the year? Guess how I am going to spend my fall vacation this year...

16 Oct 2012¶

I was able to knock off work an hour or so early today and spend a couple of hours out at the museum working on the Vance. My main focus today was cleaning up the frame of the machine using a twisted knot wire wheel. It actually went a lot faster than I thought it would - because most of the main casting had been painted at the factory, it actually cleaned up very easy and the rust was not that bad. I used the forklift to pick the frame up to move it to a better place to work - while I had it lifted in the air, I had the great idea that it sure would be easier to work on the machine lifted off the ground rather than having to kneel down and work on it bent over - so I did all the work with the machine levitated at just the right height to stand in front of it. Sure saved my knees and back! Here is the machine after I was more or less through cleaning it:

When that was done, I used some lag bolts to attach two 4x6 timbers under the feet to use as a skid. Using some old boiler tubes that were on the scrap pile, I then rolled the machine up the railroad track into the shop area and parked it right over one of the pits used to work on the bottom of the locomotives. This will give me excellent access to the bottom side of the machine for the rest of the restoration!

If all goes well, my machine will get a coat of paint tomorrow evening and the slow process of putting it all back together will commence as well!

The main frame Casting is bolted together. The left and right pieces are single castings and then there are two end caps, two cross pieces between the feet, and several cross braces in the middle of the machine. The two end caps interestingly have a piece of lead sheeting sandwiched between the castings to help keep them solid!

17 Oct 2012¶

Keep in mind that the frame of the machine is what aligned all of the other parts - it has to be put together just right. More than likely, Vance had jigs and fixtures to help them when doing this critical step. Considering that there was no real reason for me to want to take these pieces apart (they are not broken or in need of repair), it just did not make sense to do so.

I am actually planning on replacing a few of the bolts in the frame - several of them are severely rusted and one was broken off. However, I will replace these one at a time without really taking the frame apart - most of the parts have multiple bolts holding them in place, so by replacing them one at at time, I should not alter the alignment of the machine.

Well, the work on the Vance continues!

I took the liberty of using about six hours of that vacation time I have to use before the end of the year today and spent it on my favorite hobby...

First order of business today was to get a coat of paint on the matcher. I used Rustolium flat black - just brushed it on. She sure came out pretty!

I also moved my blasting cabinet out to the museum so that I could take advantage of that wonderful tool to help in cleaning up some of the parts in the big ole pile to be cleaned. The first parts to work on were the height adjustment pieces that move the top cutterhead up and down. Here is a before and after shot of the blasting cabinet will do - it took about five min each to get these parts cleaned up:

After the paint had dried pretty good, I got out the gold paint and highlighted the letters on the machine. Boy does that make them POP!

The next big task on the machine will be getting the gears and shafts re-built for the crank that raises and lowers the cutter-head. Unfortunately, I was not left with any real option but to cut the two threaded screws that do the raising and lowering, as well as the bottom shaft that connects them. The screws will have to be made on the lathe - one is right hand threaded and the other left hand.

The two sets of bevel gears are also beyond repair - many of the teeth on each of the gears are missing and the other ones are so badly pitted, they won't last long if I did try to fix the broken ones. I went to our local Bearings and Drive location today and got a photo copy of the pages from their book that shows stock bevel gears that I can use as replacements. After doing some measuring and "engineering", I found a set that I can order that should do a good job as replacements - they are not exactly the same as the original ones, but close enough that they will work just fine.

Next steps will probably be on the lathe making some of those parts I had to saw in half to get them apart....

18 Oct 2012¶

I managed to find a few more hours late this afternoon and evening. Not a whole lot accomplished, just several little things - mostly cleaning and a little bit of painting:

These parts were cleaned up and will be shipped to Cattail to have new castings made. The sister to the bearing block shown was busted and only one of the gear covers was present on the machine.

And, I also got the main cutter-head in the spooge tank cooking. I prefer media blasting and wire wheels on most cast iron pieces, but I did not want to use abrasives on the cutte-rhead for fear of messing up the journals that go in the bearings any worse they already are.

For the record, the museum does not have the budget to contribute towards the restoration of this machine. I am basically financing it out of my own pocket (as I have done with all of the other machines I have restored for the museum). It is my way of giving something back - and it gives me an excuse to feed my addiction for restoring old arn.

In the case of the bevel gears that I replaced, doing nothing was not an option- they were so far gone that they were worthless. I weighed the options of trying to repair them, make a new set, or just purchase new ones. In the end, replacing them was actually the cheapest option. I am not sure that they could have reasonably been repaired (and held) and trying to do so would have taken many, many hours of precious time. I could have machined a new set, but by the time I purchased some tooling needed to do the job, I would have had more money in the tooling than what a new set cost. So, I reluctantly bit the bullet and just bought a new set. Fortunately, the other gears on the machine that need some serious help I think are repairable.

As to your point on having to save up some money to get to the next step, I too will likely find myself in that same place (Christmas is coming you know). I am not sure how we might handle that point to keep things totally fair, but don't think for a minuet that I have a big budget from the museum backing me on this. Of course, having access to the museums restoration shops and all of their tools and machinery is no doubt an advantage that I probably have in my favor (although, I seem to be relocating a lot of stuff from my own shop out to the museum for this job...)

I am keeping track of how much money I sink into this project - as well as the hours spent on it. I almost hate to find out how much it ends up costing me. In the end, it will likely have been cheaper to have just purchased a machine in running order (but what is the fun in that?)

19 Oct 2012¶

I have made many gears over the years on a horizontal mill using a dividing head. They are not all that difficult to make, but probably not a project that a beginning machinist would want to tackle. You first machine the profile of the gear out on a lathe, mount the blank on the dividing head, set the dividing head so that it cuts the proper number of gears, and use the correct cutter to get the gear profile you need.

The real challenge is to make sure that the cutters you are using are the correct profile - that is where things get complicated. Even within a certain pitch gear, the profiles differ depending in the diameter of the gear to allow for proper tooth clearance. Even though I have made gears before, I always end up having to read up on gear making before each project to make sure I am setting things up correctly. The whole process is not rocket science, but compared to many other machine shop jobs, it does come close....

I sure wish that I had a horizontal mill and a good dividing head right now - it sure would come in handy on some of the gear repairs I will be doing soon.

Not a whole lot accomplished today - had a lot going on a work today and some family commitments this evening. However, I did manage to squeeze in about two hours in the shop working on the restoration. The project for the day was making two new elevation screws to raise and lower the top cutter-head height adjustment castings. The original ones were so rusted in place that I had to cut them in order to get the castings off. These were made on the lathe and were a good exercise in basic lathe work. I turned them between centers to that I could remove the entire part from the lathe to test the fit in the holes tapped in the bottom of the castings. One is threaded right hand and the other left hand.

I got one of the two screws completed:

The second one was turned to final dimensions, but still needs to have the threads cut (which I hope to complete on Saturday). My cutter was needing replacement as I finished up on the second part, resulting in a slightly rougher final finish than I would like, but by the time I get through cutting the threads, you won't be able to tell.

20 Oct 2012¶

Pretty slow on progress today, spent most of the day with some very important family time. However, I again managed to carve out a couple of hours this afternoon to plug away on the Vance.

I finished threading the second elevation screw that I started yesterday. After that was done, I had to make two bushings for the new gears to fit on the elevation screws. The hole in the old gears was ¾" in diameter while the new gears came from the factory with 1" bores. Also, after doing a mock up with the new gears, I determined that I needed about .200 extra thickness in the gear to keep position it properly on the shaft. So, the bushings did two things - reduced the internal diameter of the bore to ¾" and added the extra thickness needed. The bushings were machined so that they would be put in place with press fit.

Below are the elevation screws with the gears on the end showing how they will fit in place. I did not press the shank on the screws into the gear bushings yet as I am not ready to put them in place yet and the fit into the gear is just tight enough to make it a pain to get them back apart. Once I am ready for that step, I will press them on and then drill and ream a tapered hole through the gear and screw and use a taper pin to keep them in place (just like the original setup). I was very pleased with how it all turned out.

When I cleaned up the two cast iron brackets, I noticed that one had been broken and brazed back together. While the repair is probably just fine, I think that I am going to drill and tap two holes from the side and put some screws in there to give it some extra strength. There can actually be a good bit of force put on that casting and I would rather make the repair better while I have it all apart rather than having to deal with it later on.

And finally, I flipped the main cutter-head that has been cooking in the spooge tank for a couple of days. I took a Scotchbrite pad and cleaned up the part above the water and sprayed it down with some WD-40 to keep it from rusting. I was very happy with how well the part that I cleaned up did clean up! The bearing surface (at least on this side) cleaned up very smooth and after polishing out a bit on the lathe, I think that it will be ready to go. I also got the rust off of the cutter-head down to bare metal with very little effort. I actually can't wait to let it cook for another couple of days and pull it out and clean it up for good!

21 Oct 2012¶

I manged to put in a total of about 2.5 hours in small batches of time over the afternoon. My main focus was to finish repairing the one bracket for the elevation screws that was broken and brazed back together.

But first, I promised a picture of the repair to one of the teeth on one of the expansion gears:

This is an interesting repair. Before I even found this one, I was thinking about how I might repair a few teeth on another one of my gears. I basically came up with an idea very similar to this, but I was going to mill a dovetail slot in the gear and make a matching tooth with the dovetail on the bottom. This repair looks similar, but with the straight edges, I wonder what is holding it in place. It does not appear to be welded and I do not see any brass from brazing, so I am just not sure. Regardless, it appears to be well done and holding just fine.

Now, on to my repair for the day. I first used a center drill to start a hole on each side of the broken piece. It was then drilled and counter bored for a 10-28 cap screw. The hole was then tapped and two cap screws installed. I now have no fears of the piece breaking again.

With the cap screws installed, I next basically brazed over both of them to fill in the hole left at the top side and to lock the screws in place. Once cooled, I ground everything down flush with the original profile to further hide the repair.

The hole that the shaft fit into was not perfect after the repair, and was also enlarged a bit larger than it should be from years of wear. To fix that, I used a boring head on my milling machine to bore the hole out over sized.

I will machine a bronze bushing on the lathe later on and press it into the enlarged hole. The bronze bushing will bring the diameter of the hole back down to the correct size as well as provide a better bearing surface for the turning rod that will fit into it. I did not have time to make the bushing, but that should be easy enough another day.

I also spent a few minutes putting a coat of paint on some of the castings that I had cleaned up in my blasting cabinet over the past week. I usually spend a little bit of time blasting parts each day I am at the museum (I don't usually do it for long because bending over the cabinet will make my back sore if I do it for too long at one time). The parts were starting to pile up and I did not want to risk any rust getting on them. There are LOTS more parts to be blasted and painted...

22 Oct 2012¶

I only had about an hour after work this afternoon - not enough time to get too deep in anything very involved. So, I spent the time just piddling on some little things that would be quick and easy. This included pressing some shafts out of gears, hand wheels and such. I will show this one picture though - just because it is kind of cool:

This gear came from under the machine - on the other side of it is the tight/loose pulley that drives the feed works. The shaft that connected the pulleys and this drive gear was very badly rusted - so rusted that the shaft looked like it was about twice as thick as it should have been - the rust was in layers, which puffed up making a big mess. The shaft, being steel, like so many other parts on this machine rusted much worse than did the cast iron parts. Before pressing the cut off piece out, I took it to a wire wheel and removed most of the flaking rust. I real surprised when I pressed the part off how preserved the steel was that was inside of the gear! As you can see, it was nice and shiny and no rust inside at all (a little staining around the keyway where some water seeped in). I did not clean the shaft at all - it came out that clean - and you can see how much of the steel had eroded away from years of rust. Anyway, I thought it was picture worthy...

24 Oct 2012¶

I was able to spend about four hours working on the Vance tonight after work. Made for a long day, but I felt like I finally made some good progress today. All this machine shop work just really slows the progress down to a crawl, but I did not really have any option but to totally re-work the elevation mechanism on this machine due to its really poor state.

I started the evening turning down a couple of bronze bushings for the angle brackets. I had in my stash several bushings that were already bored to 3/4" internally (what they needed to be), but I needed to turn the outsides down to the proper diameter for a press fit in the bracket. To do this, I used a tapered mandrel on the lathe and turned them between centers. This tapered mandrel has a very slight taper on it so that the bushing will fit on one end but tighten up as it slides towards the other end. Once it is tight on the mandrel, you simply mount it between centers and the piece is perfectly centered. Once mounted, I turned the bushings down to the correct diameter.

From there, the bushings went to the arbor press where they were pressed into the brackets:

I then used an adjustable reamer to ream the inside diameter of the bushings out a few thousandths so that they shaft going them would turn easily:

The bevel gear was then pressed onto the bottom of the elevation screws, a hole drilled through the entire piece, and a tapered reamer was used to ream a tapered hole through the gear and shaft.

And finally, a tapered pin was inserted and pressed in place to key the gear onto the shaft. This is exactly how the originals were attached.

I was able to get the bracket and elevation screw mounted to one side of the machine before I had to call it a day and head for the house. The other side should go on next time I am out at the museum.

Additionally, I also did some machine work on the rod that will go across the two elevation screws that hold the other two bevel gears and the hand wheel for raising and lowering the top cutter-head. I did not get any pictures of that though, so I guess it really did not happen. Oh well, those parts will just magically be done next time....

26 Oct 2012¶

I finally have the entire mechanism that raises and lowers the top cutter-head working again!!! This has been the focus of my work for the past week and has been a pretty major rebuild. I am very happy to have this behind me now so that I can move on to the next step.... Of course, there are still a few things that I need to finish up - like replacing the hex head bolts with proper square head bolts (which I will need to make on the lathe) and leveling the two sides so that they are the same height.

Here is a quick video I shot showing everything working:

http://youtu.be/eoFcf8B8QWg

27 Oct 2012¶

I got out to the museum early this morning and took the main cutter-head out of the spooge tank for the last time (after I got the knives off, I put back in for a while to help clean up the area under the knives which had not been worked on in the tank because they were tightly covered up). After some elbow grease cleaning up the square head, I enlisted some help from some of the college kids who were at the shop this morning getting ready for working at the museum to get the cutter-head on the lathe. It is very heavy and awkward to handle because it is so long. The plan for the day was to clean up the bearing surfaces on the cutter-head - they were somewhat pitted and worn uneven across the length of the bearing.

One end of the cutter-head was chucked up in the four jaw chuck and the other end supported by a live center. Fortunately, the museum has a pretty large lathe - I used up almost all of the long bed once this one was mounted! After getting it on the lathe, I found the best place on the bearing journal closest to the chuck and cleaned it up with some emery paper. Here you can see how bad the journals were:

Then, using a dial indicator, I spent some time getting the four jaw chuck adjusted so that the shaft was running as true as I could get it (each jaw on a four jaw chuck adjust separate of the others). In the end, I got it turning with less than .002" of run out - which was about as good as it was going to get because of the pitting and wear on the shaft was not perfectly round!

With the cutter-head running true, I started cleaning up the journal on the far end of the lathe. To give some perspective, here is a shot of the cutter-head mounted on the lathe as I was turning the journal:

Knowing that I only had one shot at getting this job right, I turned my feed down as fine as I could go and made light cuts (about 0.005" max). In all, on the first journal, I had to remove about .080" to clean it up, but the finish was great when I got through. Here is a shot of the journal after finishing cleaning her up:

And another shot of the head on the lathe:

I only got one side turned this morning. Next time I am out at the museum, I will turn the other side and then spend some time polishing the journals so that they have a near mirror finish on them for the Babbitt bearings.

Ideally, it would have been best to have turned the head between centers rather than chucking the pulley. However, I did not have a dead center for the drive side long enough to fit inside the pulley deep enough to get into the center hole. So, I chucked the pulley, but indicated off of the journal - as it turned out, both were perfectly in line with one another, so it did not matter. Just plain old luck... I hope that I am as lucky when I do the bottom head as well!

27 Oct 2012¶

I started the day by finishing up machining the main cutter-head. I turned the other journal down to get all of the pitting and rough places out - this side took about .070" to clean up. After that, I spent near about an hour polishing the journals with various grits of emery paper until I had as smooth of a surface as I could get. I was getting some slight chattering on the side I cut today so it took a bit longer than I liked to get the chatter marks out. Fortunately, they were not too deep and actually cleaned up easier than I though. I am very happy with the end results on this cutter-head. Here she is all finished:

I had to leave the cutter-head on the lathe since I did not have any help to get it off. Too heavy and long to handle by myself. After I got through with that cutter-head, I managed to get the shorter bottom cutter-head out of the spooge tank an over on a set of saw horses where I finished cleaning it up. It is now ready to put on the lathe to clean up the journals on that one as I just finished with the first one.

My next step on the restoration project will actually be to make a couple of patterns for two missing parts - the outfeed pressure plate and a bracket that fits across the top of two stanchions that adjust the pressure plate up and down. In order to find some measurements that I will need to make this pattern, I needed to get the stanchions mounted back on the matcher.

Before I could do that though, I had to remove a broken bolt in the main casting. Unfortunately, because of the terrible shape many of the steel bolts were in, several of these broke while I was trying to remove them. I got lucky on this one though! To get it out, I first used a center punch to punch a dimple as close to the center of the bolt as I could get. Next, I drilled a small hole using a left hand drill bit - the left hand bit twist in the same direction that the bolt turns to come out. With any luck, the drilling will actually loosen the broken bolt. I ended up drilling out the hole with several increasingly larger drill bits - the third size caught the screw and it just screwed right out! It does not get much easier than that:

With the broken bolt removed, I next had to first blast the two bottom bearing blocks to clean them up and then mount them back on the matcher, followed by two narrow tables that fit on each side of the bottom cutter-head and then the stanchions themselves. For now, these parts are just temporally in place, I will have to remove most of this to pour the new Babbitt for the bottom cutter-head. But it does look good having these parts back on the machine:

Time was running out by the time I got the stanchions back on the machine. But, before I called it a day, I started taking inventory on all of the bolts that I will need to replace in this project. I really don't trust any of them anymore as they are so rusty and in some cases deteriorated. I think that in the end, bolts are going to be the biggest headache of this entire project. Because I am a stickler for details, I really want to replace the bolts with proper square head replacements. The problem is that I cannot find a source for the proper type of square head bolt - modern square head bolts have a forged head that is much larger and thinner than the heads on these bolts, which were machined from square stock. And to make matters worse, many of the bolts are 1/2" - 12 (modern 1/2" bolts are 1/2"-13). So, it looks like I will be making a lot of bolts for this restoration.

Here are some of the bolts sorted for "inventory" - all of which will need to have new ones made:

If anybody knows of a source for these kinds of square head bolts, I would sure like to know about it - it would save me a ton of time:

To make matters worse, the four jaw chuck on the big lathe at the museum will not close tight enough to grip the square stock I will use to make the new bolts from. I am either going to have to find a smaller chuck for this lathe or a smaller lathe to make the bolts on. A pain either way....

27 Oct 2012¶

My efforts today were focused on starting the process of making patterns for two of the missing parts on my machine - a pressure plate and the brace above it that adjusts the height of the plate. I first had to round up some of my pattern making tools (shrink rules, layout tools, etc.) as well as find a good piece of clear and straight wood to make the pattern from. I made a rough drawing of what I needed to make and started laying parts out and making some cuts:

The piece of wood will become the mid-rib on the pressure plate. To make it easier on the moulder at the foundry, I will be making this pattern as a split-pattern - the piece of wood you see is actually two pieces of thin stock that will divide the pattern in two halves. I used a compass to create the curves, cut it out on the band saw, and then sanded the cut smooth. While the two pieces of wood were taped together, I also drilled some holes in the piece where I will insert dowels to use as alignment pins to hold the pattern together.

It's a start - still a ways to go before it starts looking like the part I need to have cast.

27 Oct 2012¶

I finished up the bulk of the work on the first pattern tonight. I still need to so some sanding and apply some fillet material in the corners, but the pattern is basically done. Here is what she looks like:

You can see the line down the center of the pattern - the pattern splits on this line into two halves - the holes in the previous picture that I showed now have wooden dowels in them to use as index pins to properly align the pattern. The molder will lay the bottom half of the pattern face down on his molding table, set a flask around the pattern, and pack the entire flask with molding sand. Once the bottom half is done, he will flip the flask over, set the top half of the pattern on the bottom half (using the index pins), put the top half of the flask in place and pack molding sand around that. The two flasks will then be separated, the pattern removed (leaving a void in the sand) and molten iron poured into the mold.

Here is where the part will fit on the matcher:

The two thick pieces on each end will be machined to fit into the uprights and threaded screws will fit down in each side to move the entire pressure plate up and down.

After I put the finishing touches on this pattern, I will have to make another pattern for the top piece that goes across the two uprights and has a crank on top to adjust the screws to elevate the pressure plate.

31 Oct 2012¶

Spent about four hours out at the museum tonight (mostly hiding from trick-or-treaters). Worked on some more pattern making. I first worked on finishing up the pattern that I have made over the past two days - the pressure plate. I had to put some fillet material in the corners of the pattern - used leather fillet material for the large diameter fillets and wax fillet for the small diameter fillets. With that done, I sanded everything well and put a couple of coats of shellac on the pattern. Not the prettiest pattern I have ever made, but for a one time use pattern, it should be more than adequate.

And here are the two parts. The cross-hatch marks tell the molder that it is a split pattern and shows where the two parts join together:

With the pressure plate ready to go to the foundry, I started on the cross brace that goes on top of the uprights. Fortunately, for this pattern, I at least had something to work with off of the machine. There are two other nearly identical pieces that adjust the top feed rollers - the only difference with the one that I need is that this one is about two inces shorter than the ones for the feed rollers.

I started by milling a piece of clear pine to the proper outside dimension. I then used a stacked dado set to make a channel in the bottom of the pattern. From there, I laid out the length of the piece (using a 1/8 to a foot shrink rule to take into account the shrink factor of cast iron as it cools in the mold). The ends were cut to a radius profile using the band saw and the ends notched out again on the band saw. Here you can see where I am on this pattern as well as one of the larger cross pieces as an example:

Still have to cut out the end pieces cut to a radius to serve as the walls on the end of the pattern as well as the four ears that the bolts will go through.

01 Nov 2012¶

Today, I finished up the second pattern. Cut and applied the rest of the parts, put the fillets in, and finished it with shellac. It is ready to send to the foundry:

03 Nov 2012¶

I started the morning off by finishing cleaning up the second journal on the bottom cutter-head. With everything already set up from the first one, I was able to make short work out on that part of the day. About 30 min later, I was through turning the journal, and I then spent probably another 45 min polishing both journals with finer and finer grits of emery cloth until I had them with a near mirror finish.

With that done, the real job of the day started. Earlier this week, I found a nice four jaw scroll chuck on eBay - it was hardly used and had a good price, so I bought it to be able to chuck square stock to start making the many bolts needed for the restoration. I also ordered a back plate for the chuck so that I could just mount it to the lathe directly without having to worry about chucking the smaller chuck in one of the larger ones. I am going to spend a lot of time making bolts before this project is finished and I did not want to have to worry about setting up the little four jaw chuck every time I started making bolts, so the back plate will save me a lot of time as I move forward.

So, I put the back plate together, mounted her on the lathe, and started machining it so that it would fit right onto the chuck. Sounds easy, and it was not all that hard, but there were just a lot of steps and a lot of work - it took about four hours all together. In addition to the lathe work, the chuck back plate also had to have three holes drilled and counter bored on center at the correct radius. Thank goodness the Digital Read Out on my milling machine will automatically calculate bolt-hole patterns! When I stopped for lunch, I finally had the chuck mounted on the lathe and running good. I have never had a four jaw self-centering chuck before - I have always used three jaw chucks for this purpose. I think I am going to like this chuck though - it actually has less runout (about 0.003") than the big three jaw chuck that we already have for the lathe. For small jobs, I can see where I might just use this one instead of the bigger one for most of my turning work!

After lunch, I started the process of setting the lathe up to make bolts. Because of the number that will need to be made, I again decided to take some time and be smart about things - while this manual lathe is not designed for production work, if I was smart, I could set up multiple tool holders with the proper tooling set up to make the bolt making process as easy as possible. After playing around with some different approaches and tooling that I had available, I ended up with a set up that used four tool holders with different tooling. Here is the process I ended up settling on:

Step 1: Using a regular carbide insert turning tool, I face the end of the bolt and then turn it to the diameter needed (these bolts were 5/8" dia., 11 tpi). I am removing about 0.080" per pass, and it take about five passes to clean these bolts up (I think I can probably take 0.100" though to save some time - I will play with that down the road).

Step 2: I change tools to a 60 degree carbide insert tool and simply chamfer the bottom of the bolt:

Step 3: I change tools again, this time to a threading tool. I slow the lathe speed down (flip one lever), change to feed to a slower setting (flip another lever), and then chase the threads on the lathe. I will cut them until the tops of the threads are just starting to get sharp and stop.

Step 4: Rather than trying to get the depth of the threads perfect on the lathe, to save some time, at this point I just use a die to finish cutting the last little bit of the threads. This also assures that the thread on all of my bolts are exactly the same and the proper specs.

Step 5: I change tools again and part the bolt off of the stick of square stock. I started out by using a carbide insert parting tool that I have, but I did not like the tops of the bolts being parted off square - the tops of the original bolts were cut an a slight angle so that they had a domed top. So, I took a piece of HSS and ground a parting tool that had the proper dome shape to it.

Looks easy - and it really is pretty simple and straight forward the way I have it all set up. If there was a problem though, it just took a lot of time again to get things set up. At the end of the day, I had put in nearly 8 hours of work getting set up to turn bolts (including mounting the new chuck), and I had only made 8 bolts! Here are the last four that I made - all of these are 5/8-11 by 1 1/2" long (with the original for comparison):

While I guess you could say that it took me an hour to make each of the bolts I made today (8 hours - 8 bolts), the truth is that I timed the last four that I made (once my process had the kinks worked out) - it was actually taking me about 8 1/2 min each to make them. I think that as I make more, I can probably get that time down even a little shorter. If I had a turret lathe, I think I could make them in less than 2 min each...

I did try the eight bolts I made today out before I left. I replaced several old bolts on the machine as well as a few new bolts that I put in to temporarily hold things in place until I could get make these. They work like a charm - and look great to boot!!!

So, even though there is not much to show for my long day of work, there was quite a bit actually accomplished today. While I will have a lot of time in making bolts through the rest of this project, at least now I am set up and can turn them out easily as needed. Maybe now I can focus on something that will look like I am actually putting the machine back together!!!

In the case of the bolts, I did not have any square stock available on hand, so I ordered several small sticks of square stock in short lengths to play with. I ended up going with 12L14 Carbon Steel - which is an ultra-machinable type of steel - the steel actually has a small amount (as in 0.15-0.35%) of lead in it to make it easier to machine. That amount of lead is just enough to serve as a lubricant while turning without giving up any strength characteristics of the steel. This type of steel is commonly used to make bolts and other kinds of fasteners and is a favorite of machine shops to run in screw machines, turret lathes and even modern CNC equipment.

04 Nov 2012¶

I had a couple of hours this afternoon at the museum working on the Vance. I decided to start the process of the next big step on the restoration - which will be getting the side heads restored and back on the machine. As with so much with the Side heads are in pretty rough shape.

When I took the side heads off, I basically just took the bearing caps off and removed the head, pulley and the throat plate all in one unit - the head are supposed to come off easily, but not in the shape these are in. So, I first pressed the heads off of the shaft using my hydraulic press:

Then I flipped the shaft over to press the pulley off. I could tell that there was a key way in the shaft that held the pulley in position, but it did not look like it was too big of a deal. When I started pressing, I quickly maxed the press out (12 ton) and it had gone nowhere. So, I added a bit of heat with the torch - after just a few seconds of heat, I heard a "pop" - it had broken loose and started to press pretty easily.

About half way down through the press, it started to get tight again - but not so tight that it was not moving. Then I heard another "pop". Unlike the first one, this one was a very bad pop.... Here was the results:

With the damage done, I just went ahead a pressed the shaft the rest of the way out. Once it was apart, it did not take long to see what went wrong:

Instead of cutting a key way in the shaft, somebody instead just ground a flat spot on the top of the shaft. They then ground the key stock down to about half the thickness - and at a slight angle - just enough to make it like a wedge. When I was pressing the shaft off, instead of the key stock moving in the keyway, it instead worked as a wedge. Even though the shaft appeared to be pressing out just fine, as the wedge tightened up, it eventually had enough force that it broke the casting. Oh well, I guess I will be making another pulley.

I also got started on the second pulley. It was not as cooperative as the first one. I put it in the press but even after I maxed the press out at 12 tons and applied a lot of heat, it had not budged. I left it in the press to sit overnight with pressure on it. Got to think that one through. So, I might just be making two pulleys....

And while I was pressing things apart, I also pressed the screws out of the cross pieces on top of the two pressure rollers - this was the part I used as an example to make one of the patterns earlier this week. Once I got the sprockets out, I could finally answer a question I had over the weekend:

Is there a possibility that there should be bosses where those shafts come through the part?

And the answer is:

So, I made a quick alteration to my pattern:

I started to turn a couple of wooden disks on the wood lathe, but I happened to think of a washer - when I grabbed on out of the bolt bin, it was just slightly larger in diameter and a near perfect match for thickness. I used 5 min epoxy to glue them in place - and while it does not show up in the picture, I filled the center in with epoxy as well so that there will not be a hole in the center of the washers when I get the cast iron parts back. A very quick and easy modification.