For Want of a Nail…

The Fort has been trying to recover from the lack of visitors during covid. It is also working with volunteers that know much about their area of interest, but not so much about other parts.

Consider power transmission. We have been working with power transmission since ancient Roman times. What is power transmission? It is how you transmit movement from one place to another.

In the modern era, we will convert running water, high heat or a dozen other things into electricity. That electricity is then transmitted over wires to a motor. At the motor, the power is converted back to motion.

Another part of the transmission of power, is the simpler physical transmission. Consider a water wheel. The wheel rides on an axle. The axle sits in bearings. When the wheel turns, the shaft turns. Anything attached to that shaft will also turn, doing work.

If I want to transmit that work in a linear direction, I need to use some sort of method to move power from one axle to another.

This was done with gears to begin with. A pair of gears will allow you to change the direction of a rotating axle, and it will allow you to transfer rotation from one axle to a parallel axle.

The problem with gears is that they are expensive, difficult to make, and fragile.

The solution was “flat belts”. Flat belts are leather belts, sometimes many feet long. If the belts were long, they would be stitched together.

The issue for the museum is that they don’t have anybody or a group of people that are knowledgeable about all the different aspects of the different things in the museum.

Yesterday, I went up to the Fort, intending to make a replacement screw and nut for the tool rest for the lathe. This would require me turning a piece of wood down to 3/4 inches in diameter, then cutting the threads with a wood thread cutting die.

When I got there and set up, the lathe axles still have not been liberated, but I was willing to go on. With everything set up, I start turning the piece to round, in preparation for turning it to size. I’m only a short way into the process when the work jumps from between the spindles.

What?

So I take the time to really examine the tail stock and the spindle it is using. The spindle is wrought iron, it is about 1/2in in diameter, and about 16 TPI. I didn’t even have a ruler with me, so those are all guesses.

The threads look good on the spindle. Then I realized that interior threads are into wood, and that they have failed. This tail stock needs to come out of “working” and into “artifact for looking at.” Which I did.

I’m looking for how to make a replacement, when I realize there is another tail stock on the lathe, this one is more period correct. Perfect.

I swap the two tail stocks, realize the new one doesn’t have a wedge, grab the wedge from the old one and … It just slides through.

Nothing is to a standard size. I looked around for wedges, don’t find any that fit. I look for lumber to use. There is none of the correct size.

What I do see, is a half of a round of oak. All I need to do is split off a slab to use as the wood for the wedge.

The right tool is a froe. I looked around and found two.

I take it off the wall and realize that it is sticky from years of neglect on the wall. I checked the edge, it looks ok. I put it on the round and wack it, hard, with a mallet. It bounces.

Turns out that it is dull as a piece of raw bar stock.

No problem, I’ll sharpen it. Over to the whetstone. It is a beautiful old piece, about 36 inches in diameter, treadle driven. But not period. I don’t care, I just need to sharpen this one tool.

Except that the wheel doesn’t free turn. It looks like it has slipped on its axle. The crank isn’t attached correctly. It doesn’t work. It needs to be fixed.

That means I have to do this by hand. 30+ minutes later, I have what is pretending to be a working edge. Back to the round, yes, having a sharp(er) froe allowed me to cut of a piece.

Now to the shaving horse and the draw knife to rough shape it.

It is obvious that this is a working tool. It is sharp and cuts nicely. Pretty soon, I have a wedge like shape.

The issue is that it isn’t the right size/shape. And I really can’t do what I need to do because the clamp on the shaving horse is in the way.

So I go looking for a plane. I found two. These are wood planes. I have never used a wood plane before. I have to adjust the frog, the throat, and the depth of cut. All with a five pound wood mallet.

I got that done. Go to clamp my chunk of wood into the vise. That fails, the only vise that is correctly mounted is broken, it feels like stripped threads.

That means I’m balancing the piece on the worktable pressed against a dog, and slowly learning how to use these planes.

With the help of my lady, I was able to get it done. Of course, the first version wasn’t right, so I had to reshape it.

Having the wedge allowed me to go back to turning.

Did I mention that I’m old, fat, and out of shape? At the end of this time, I’m dripping sweat. It is about 93°F. There is no cross breeze because the back wall is closed off.

I switched to instruction mode. Had some patrons come by, they did a bit of apprentice work. I.e., they worked the treadle while I worked the chisel.

I figure another day or two, and I’ll have actually completed my first turning up there.

The big thing about this, is just how much work needs to be done to do the next thing that needs to be done.

Oh, I learned how to tension rope beds. Very cool, and I learned out to make the tensioning tool.