Well here's another look at the project. Week and a half ago picked up some metal to use to band the collet tray and make washers as well picked up some sheet stock to make the trays. Picked up enough metal to make two sets of trays one for the #39 and one set for the #86. Had the metal store cut the sheet stock down to 9by19 and 13by19 for the two different sizes. Then proceeded to mark out he 1/2" line for bending the edges and cut out the corners and marked them up for radius corner. Luckily we have a small metal shop at work which had a bending brake so spent 15min with the techs setting up the brake and then bending the 4 sides per piece. Here's a pictures showing the resultant product.

Then on this past Saturday used a 1" piece of pipe in the vise to carefully hammer over the two tabs to make a rounded corner. Needed to use the Dremel tool to cut off some of the tab so that we had a close fit.  Here's  a close up of the corner once hammered over prior to welding and then a picture of the welded corner as well. A professional welder I am not however by the end the welds were looking a lot better then the first ones I did.

 



Once they were all welded up I carefully ground the outside's and insides to give a smoother surface cleaned them with acetone and then gave them a coat of primer on both sides. I'll them just let them sit until I'm ready to install them. This will be down the road sometime as I need to use the tray bracket as a template to make a pattern so that I can get some more brackets cast up. I'll be talking about the pattern making in some future blogs. I did not get around to making the collet tray edging or washers since I bought the wrong size stock so need to get some correct sized material for this work. I also received the first of the parts from California to fix my #39 second parcel comes this week and the overhead drive assembly I hope will be shipped to my cousins in the US within the week. I'll be able to pick this up in May when I visit thereby saving me border charges and higher shipping costs.

Till next time

Harold