Well it wasn't quite one of those 2ft forward 1ft backward week although at times it felt like it. One of the first things to do was finish making the small locating tabs for the Dividing head and tailstock. Last week I finished off making the small tabs, I just had to drill and tap them. Initially was going to do this on the drill press however I do not have a small drill press vise. So into the milling machine vise all four pieces went. Centred up the mill over the parts and then drilled them out. Once drilled they were countersunk to allow a countersunk screw to be used to secure them to the Dividing head and tail stock. Here are a couple of pictures showing this process. In the third picture the Tailstock is back on the mill located nicely in the grooves.

Then slowly over the week I worked on trying to repair a couple of change gears before I start the repair job on the back gear. How does that adage go " Practice, practice, practice" Looks like I still need to practice. My first braze trial did not survive the cutting process. Evidently I did not get a sufficient bond between the cast iron and the braze. For instance an entire tooth came off when it was almost profiled. However that's not a big problem we just go back to the practice table and try again. Although these are original gears they are not critical to make the lathe work and if need be can be replaced. After a few trial and errors I finally got the smaller of the two gears to work. It took a combination of milling and filing but it essentially works as a gear should. I will most likely still do a little touch up on it when I mount it on the lathe and check the smoothness with another gear. However that will be done somewhere down the road. Here is a picture of the smaller gear. First picture is when mounted on the dividing head the second one after the job is finished. The more astute of you will realize that it is not perfect and that one tooth still has some of it's mass missing however as of now it will work until I decided to either redo it or replace it.

Once this was finished I went onto the larger gear, the 90 toother. Again brazed the area with the missing tooth however the adjoining brazed teeth started to melt so had to go over that section as well. Once it had cooled down in the Kitty Litter I filed it down smooth on the sides and on the top before mounting it in the Dividing head. Here are a couple of pictures showing this before the milling began. After mounting this I realized I should also use the tailstock to secure the arbor so I centre drilled the arbor on the lathe. I then mounted the tailstock back on the mill and slid the tailstock up and used it to help secure the arbor. One other issue I noticed is that this dividing head does not have a lock on it so when milling the teeth there is an ever so slight movement of the gear from the backlash in the dividing head gears. Not a great amount however there is a slight movement. Whether this will affect the operation is yet to be seen, I do not have the experience to say yea or nay.

Again we noticed that my welding was not quite up to par. This time though we also lost the repaired teeth from a previous owner. The ones that started melting when I was working on the adjacent tooth. However I was surprised a bit in that the repaired section had been milled flat and then the braze was added. It almost looks like they did not weld the braze in they may have silver soldered a block in and then cut the teeth. However I do need to go back to the drawing board on repairing this gear. I might make one more attempt at brazing or I'll just mill out a section and then fit in a replacement block that will be pinned in place and then cut the teeth required. Here is a picture showing the gear as it sits. You can see the original repaired tooth piece on the left side of the gear and the milled flat part on the right side. The original broken tooth that I was trying to repair is shown in the picture with a small hole drilled into the root of the tooth. I figured this might be a spot where a little more braze could flow in and provide more of a locking point for the repair job.

So I went back to another scrap gear and played around with brazing that one as well. I believe that on that one I have a much better bond between cast iron and braze. I was a lot more careful where I placed the heat. I have come to the conclusion though that for a non professional such as myself that smaller gears are probably harder to do since I've noticed that if you are not careful with the heat you tend to get adjacent teeth starting to melt since they are so small. I would hope that with larger thicker teeth you have less of an issue with this. So with this all done I decided to make my attempt at repairing the two broken teeth on the back gear. Now on this gear there are two broken  teeth about 180deg apart. I drilled two holes into the tooth root and tapped them for a pair of #10-24 allen set screws. I figure this will be my mechanical lock between the cast iron gear and the brazed tooth. Then very carefully warmed up the part and then started to heat the immediate area of the broken tooth to weld it up. Of course the two set screws turned cherry red much earlier then the surrounding cast iron so I had to be careful there getting the cast iron pliable without destroying the set screws. I believe I managed that and got I believe a pretty reasonable braze job on one of the teeth. I then applied a little post heat before dumping it into the Kitty litter to cool down overnight. One thing that was a little different here was that there was a lot more violent reaction between the set screws and the braze when it was being applied. Today pulled out the back gear from the kitty litter and cleaned it up. I will either weld up the second one this afternoon or tomorrow. However as of now here are two pictures showing the resultant braze job before filing it down to size. At that point I will cut some grooves where needed and then place on the Mill for the final profile cut.

So for the next few days I will continue to work on this back gear. 

On another note It has come to my attention that the owner of one of these lathes is looking at selling his lathe. If anybody out there has a serious interest in maybe owning one of these lathes please let me know and I will put you in contact with the seller. I will state though that the lathe will need a little bit of work and she is missing a few cosmetic items.

Well since next week is Easter I'm not sure when the next post will be. It will all depend on how much I get done and when I go to visit my Mom. So until the next post Happy Easter and have a great time hunting Easter eggs with the kids or grandkids and enjoy that Easter Ham.

Harold