At the Fort at #4

I’ve been enjoying visiting the Fort. Hagar is a volunteer interpreter there.

The first time I visited the Fort, Hagar showed me around. As we moved from room to room, I noticed that some artifacts were damaged or missing parts.

One of the artifacts I noticed was missing some spindles and toppers. This is not an issue if you have a wood turning lathe.

They did have a treadle lathe. I received permission to use it from Bill. Once I had his permission, he told me that the belt wasn’t hooked up.

I told him I knew and then proceeded to get it belted up. He sat and watched. I now know that the belt hasn’t been on the lathe in years.

Then I found out why, as soon as I started trying to treadle, the belt came off the big wheel in the joists. In addition to not staying on, the wheel had massive wobble from side to side.

Bill explained that it was unlikely to work because the driven wheel, on the lathe, wasn’t flat. I explained to him that it was crowned on purpose and that the reason the belt comes off the drive wheel/fly wheel is because it wasn’t crowned.

After talking to the acting director and Bill some more, I received permission to take the wheel home to work on it.

I was intending to pick it up a week ago last Friday, when I took Hagar to the fort. They didn’t have it down, so I couldn’t take it home.

When I asked to pick up the wheel this last Friday, they told me that the really didn’t want it gone during the upcoming High Land games. When I explained I wanted to pick it up on Friday, so I could bring it back on Sunday, things moved.

They had the wheel down and ready for pickup on Wed. I picked it up on Friday and brought it home.

It took some work, but by that night I was able to get the wheel mounted on the back side of my lathe.

This involved squaring the end of a one-inch piece of round stock. I messed up the first attempt, but got it right the second time.

The Blue Haired Fairie helped me get it onto the lathe. It isn’t that it is just heavy, it is awkward as well. 44 inches in one diameter.

Once it was up and running, I moved on to crowning the wheel.

The belt sander wasn’t where I wanted it to be, so I used an angle grinder with a flapping disk. This worked, but not well. It bounced so it was making rippling waves on the surface of the wheel.

In addition, the wheel was out of round about a 1/4 inch, maybe more. Not happy making.

I called it a night.

On Saturday, I decided to turn it round and then to crown it. Except I don’t have a single spindle turning tool. I’ve got metal working tools, I don’t have wood turning tools.

I got my best chisel. A mortising chisel, or it might be a registration chisel. It is for squaring up the corners of pockets.

I created a make shift freestanding tool rest. Spun the wheel up to 40 RPM and started cutting. It was slow-going. I was learning how to cut. Sometimes it was working ok, sometimes it was not. I was experimenting with angles and other possibilities.

The problem was that the tool rest was not rigid enough. Every time the chisel took a bite, the tool rest would flex out of the way. I could not move the chisel smoothly from side to side.

With the RPM being so slow, every move had to be slow, to allow the wheel to spin all the way around.

At the end of about 4 hours, I called it a day. The wheel was “good enough, maybe”.

Overnight, I had a different idea, instead of using the out feed table directly, I was going to clamp a piece of metal to the out feed table to act as the physical rest.

This still kept me close enough to center line, and the new tool rest allowed me to more easily move the chisel from side to side.

I also ran the lathe up to 135 RPM. This took me to 1500 SFM. A better cutting speed than 460 Feet Per Minute.

In short order, I had sawdust and shavings coming off everywhere. I am pleased to report that the wheel is mostly true now. It also has a 5-degree crown.

When I arrived, they let me in to unload. Then got the truck out of there as there were still patrons going around.

When I got back to the joiners shop, Bill was talking to a group. We waited for them to leave. I showed Bill how the drive crank should only go into the hub in one orientation. I drove the wedge in on the “free” side, checked the wiggle. There was none.

We discussed how to get the wheel back in the rafters, he made the sage decision to get help.

He was soon back with Tom to give us an assist.

So there are three old men, about to lift 100+ pounds, into the rafters to hang. That thing is awkward.

The first attempt failed. The belt didn’t stay in place. We reset.

On the second lift, we got it up and the crank side was resting in the axle support. I quickly moved the offside axle support into place, screwed on the wood adjustment nut, and we had the wheel up.

We had to do a little manipulation to get it to seat properly, but that was easy.

With the wheel up, we worked together to guide the belt up and over. The belt was now on the drive flywheel.

I putt the driven wheel in place, and we carefully moved the belt onto the driven wheel.

With that done, I started checking the tracking. It wasn’t looking good, the belt would rapidly move to the edge and start to come off.

I adjusted the tracking and in a few minutes, we had the belt tracking.

With that, it was time to attach the treadle.

Bill connected the drive rod to the crank. I attached the drive rod to the treadle.

We were ready to go.

Yes, it spun! It took a little bit, and it didn’t want to keep spinning, but it is spinning.

With a bit of work, we got the workpiece in place, as well as the tail stock and tool rest.

While Bill was working on attaching the treadle rod to the crank, I had sharpened the chisel I had found.

With Bill in charge of motive power, I started making chips.

IT WORKS!

I knew it should work, but this was the first time I have crowned a pulley. In addition to having added the crown, cutting the wheel round and attaching the crank correctly solved the issue of the wheel wobble and the horrible sounds the drive system was making.