Well I hope you all had a nice Easter. I also hope that spring and summer come soon. This cold weather we're having is starting to become depressing. However there are at least two good things that have happened lately. The first is that my house has officially sold and I will be moving to St Catharines/Niagara-on-the-lake later this summer. Because of this I will be essentially putting my blog on hold until I am up and running in the new house. This edition will be the last big writeup for restoration purposes. I may put up some small updates as the summer goes, but this will most likely be the last restoration work related blog until my guess the end of summer. So for those who look me up I wish you all the best for the summer and look forward to seeing you come back in late summer early fall for more updates.

The other good news is that as of now we have success on repairing the broken teeth on the Bull and Back gear. As you recall when I left you two weeks ago I had brazed one tooth on the back gear and was getting ready to weld up the second gear. Well the second gear was brazed up and once cool both welds were cleaned up and filed down to tooth height. Here are two pictures showing the braxing on opposite sides of the gear and one side filed down to height.

Now it was over to the milling machine to use the involute gear cutters I bought to cut out the tooth profile. Prior to doing this I roughed out some slots for the space between teeth so as to minimize the amount of material the cutter needed to remove. I snugged up the gear in the vice and then using a square ensured the groove was vertical to the milling table by lining up the groove with the centre of the shaft and then rotating the gear until the centre of the groove lined up with the square. This took a little time but worked out pretty good. I then moved the table in so the cutter centre was lined up with the centre of the groove. As the cutting operation was carried out I slightly adjusted this "Y" axis to ensure  proper tooth placement. After have a dozen passes going no more than 15thous at a time the first groove was done. Then rotate the gear and do the process all over again. After 4 setups both gear teeth were cut out. Checked them with the Bull gear and they work pretty good. I will need to clean them up slightly with some filing however for now the Back gear is replaced. Here are some pictures showing the various setups and the results of the milling process.

 After this proved to be successful I carefully brazed up the Bull gear by the same process. Drilled and tapped for 2 #10-24 set screws and then heated up the part. Brazed in the repair and placed in the kitty litter for cool down. Once part was cooled removed and cleaned up the brazing as well as cut some grooves to remove material prior to machining. Once this was done over to the mill and same as before centred up the part using square and cut first groove. Once this was done repeat for second cut. On the Bull gear only one tooth was broken and missing so after two operations we were done with the Bull gear. Then it was over to the bench to finish file the tooth down. One of the reasons for filing is that although this is the correct cutter there was an ever so slight difference in the profile of the cutter and the original teeth. The cutter left a more rounded bottom were as the original tooth profile had a squarer bottom as well I needed to then the tooth slightly. The cutter seemed to be slightly thinner than the groove in the original teeth. Oh well nothing that 20 min at the table filing couldn't fix. Here are some pictures of work on the Bull gear and the final shot showing the meshing of the teeth from Bull to Back gear.

The last thing I've done is clean up the Back gear and then prime and paint the rough cast iron surface. Here is a final pictures showing the back gear prepped and primed.

Well as mentioned above this will be the last installment of the restoration Project until I get setup in my new house. Over the next few weeks I will be going to the new location to find a house and then I plan on moving the machinery myself during the Month of May by doing weekly  trips to visit Mom and dropping of stuff into storage. I will most likely just post small updates on how everything is going but no major write ups till late summer or early fall. Until then have a great summer and don't get to sunburned.

Harold