A small boy and his friend run through the yards, they are 5 or 6 years old. They slide partially down a hillside and slowly peek over the top, looking for “Charlie”.

The one boy turns to the other and asks, “What are you going to do when you are drafted?”

War comes to them on the TV every night. They know about those that ran to Canada. They know those that stayed. They know of the bodies of what were once vibrant young men arrive day after day from that horrible place, Vietnam.

They talk of their grandfathers. Of those that served in WWII. They speak of the silence of those veterans who returned.

Today, I remember my Great Uncle Joe talking about all the heroes he knew. Some of whom died in the skies over Germany. He was never a hero. He flew in the same plane, he put his pants on the same, he ate with those heroes. According to him, every man aboard his plane was a hero, except him.

He was a hero. He was a bombardier of a B17 Flying Fortress.

Today, Vietnam is ancient history. Desert Storm, V1 in 1991 is ancient history. The war on terror is what is remembered by men older than their years.

“All gave some, some gave all.”

Thank you, I remember you. We remember you.

After more than a week, success was had.

The number of subprojects that went into this one simple little gear boggles my mind.

• Locate a reasonable rotary table
• Document what was needed for it
• Clean and restore 8″ Cushman Chuck
• Make chuck key
• Locate dividing plates for the rotary table
• Make T-Nuts for rotary table
• Make socket-head replacement screws for chuck
• Make socket-head attachment screws for chuck/backplate interface
• Make backplate
• Make retaining collar
• Make MT3 alignment plug
• Modify eccentric to have a retaining grove for U-Spring
• Make grooving tool
• Make nose cap for spindle
• Thread eccentric for tensioning ring
• Make a mandrel for holding gear blanks
• Make gear blanks
• Read the section in the 1914 Machinery’s Handbook about gears
• Create Emacs spreadsheet to calculate gear cutting parameters
• Create a Python program to create a dividing plate table
• Incorporate dividing plate information into Org-mode spreadsheet for single point of information (Enter DP and Number of teeth, get out cutting parameters and which dividing plate to use along with dividing plate setup)

In addition to that, I have 3 toolholders almost finished, I’m still waiting for the dovetail cutter to arrive and then to drill and tap the adjustment screw plus the retaining screws.

For those that might wonder why 14.5° PA, 16 DP instead of a more modern 20° PA, it is because this is what my lathe uses.  With a single purchase of the 8 involute cutters, I can make any gear my lathe might need.