Model A - fitting the kickstart pawl

 Back home after a few days away fitting a new front door and frame at my daughter's house in Kent, I find a few minutes to move the kickstart shaft project along a little bit. 

When I left a few days ago I had the shaft set up in the pillar drill just waiting for final adjustment and the fitting of a centre drill to start the hole for the pawl.

That done, we move on to the 9/32" hole on the outside of the shaft. I have discovered that the pin is retained in place by the low gear pinion and cannot come out in service. I bought a pair of long series drills for this job and it makes it a little easier to set the work up on the pillar drill. We go right the way through both sides with this one:

We follow the 9/32" with a 5/16" drill which only goes through the inside web. I'm pleased that the pin fits very well in these two holes and with a little fettling (the pawl was rather ragged) the pawl goes in as well.

I'm a bit concerned by the shape of the pawl where it engages the pinion as the surface, perhaps not surprisingly, is rather worn. A further problem is that the cam which pushes the pawl back into place actually jams the shaft. This is due to the lack of wear in the new shaft I think since dimensionally it is identical to the old one.

Working on the pawl a little to square it up and refine the edges sorts out the problem and we have a pawl that goes nicely into the retracted position:

The video shows it working in both positions:

A dose of heat and a pot of case hardening compound will give us a pawl that fits and has sharp edges giving it plenty of life. We'll have to see if it still works with the bush in place - that might require a bit more fettling, so we will leave the case hardening until that is done.

Model A - drilling holes

 With the space for the pawl milled out, the next step is to drill some holes for the pawl spring and the pivot pin. When that is done we can function test part of the mechanism.

To drill for the pawl spring we keep the vertical slide setup in the lathe. Getting the height is straightforward because we can use the old shaft to line the vice up with the drill and thus ensure the angle of the hole is correct. 

Since this is going to be drilled in a surface that isn't perpendicular to the drill, I start the hole with a 1/4" slot drill and cut for a few millimetres, finishing the hole to depth with a twist drill.

The twist drill is marked to depth with a bit of tape. A 1/4" drill isn't quite enough - I drill it 6.5 mm to clear the spring and it's plunger:

The holes for the pivot pin aren't quite so easy. I'm going to make a small deviation from the original design here - The original pin is stepped, it's a 5/16" pin reduced to 9/32" for part of its length. Strangely the larger size is inboard, so the step prevents it moving outboard. I want to make the smaller size inboard so that there is no possibility of the pin coming loose and interfering with the layshaft first gear. 

The problem with this approach is that there is no way a conventional twist drill can reach.

I ordered some long series twist drills from the excellent Tracy Tools. They will be here in a few days.

Charlie's Shed - new for old

 A chance look at marketplace on Facebook brought a new addition to the workshop yesterday. As many of you will know I've had this old pillar drill for 6 or 7 years and it's had a few modifications to stiffen it up and remove play from the quill - not entirely successfully. 

This new one is much the same design but from a better manufacturer - it has a cast base, thicker pillar, and a cast table. 

There is also no play in the quill!

Pillar Drill Spindle Bearings

My cheapo pillar drill is a project in itself also I've had it for quite a few years now and it's had a few modifications to improve its performance .

I probably should have bought a better one in the first place!

This blog post was useful guide to what to expect when pulling the drill apart:

http://sealeypillardrill.blogspot.com/2017/04/sealey-pillar-drill-strip-gdm30a.html

It's got a bit of run-out on the spindle and in this picture the run-out doesn't look like much. However the main problem is the quill itself which wobbles around in its bearings.

The pulleys are a bit loose too, but this is down to burrs and a loose grub screw

This is the return spring - simple, but appears to work adequately:

The three handles on the quill pinion constantly come loose and are now held in with Loctite:

I made this bracket to support the end of the depth stop and as a place to hold the chuck key. The bracket replaces a crappy plastic one that came with the drill and broke quite quickly:

Here's the top spindle bearing in the quill. There's no play here.

The play is here, in the body of the drill. There's not a great deal I can do to improve this...

What I've done is to put a screw into the body which pushes on the quill, taking out some of the play.

Another area of weakness is in the table which bends as it is only made of rather flexible sheet metal.

It can be stiffened up quite easily with the welder:

The next thing we might do is stiffen up the base of the drill as well, as again this is quite flexible. However this is only affecting accuracy if your work is standing on the base.

FH Dry Build - Magneto Cutout Switch

There's lots of jobs to do on an old bike project - some dramatic, some messy, some tedious, some hardly noticeable. One of these is the magneto cutout, which is a small Lucas 76207 horn button mounted in a folded steel bracket to one of the handlebar clamp studs. It's here:

You'll recall I made some nuts last week - one of these was the locking nut for the cutout button:

The bracket will be a bit of 2 mm cold rolled sheet, but its a bit of an odd shape as it has to appear from under the top yoke, go forward under the handlebar and then pop out between the handlebar and the casquette. It took me three goes to get it right in cardboard:

I made the next prototype in 0.8 mm sheet which I could cut with snips and fold easily:

This looked OK but the switch wasn't quite in the right place:

It took me two more goes in this sheet before I felt confident that I wouldn't be wasting time if I went to the full thickness. Of course, at 2 mm thick it was going to need a bend allowance and it's straightforward to build that in during the marking out stage.

Here's a close up after drilling - you can see the double lines showing the position of the bends. I use a bend allowance equivalent to the thickness of the material - in this case adding 2.0 mm to each bend.

Here it is again, having been cut out with the hacksaw, filed and linished to the final shape:

I didn't take any pictures of the folding in the vice. I was careful to use the smooth jaws, have the bend line exactly aligned with the top of the jaws and to observe the bend forming as I pushed it over, such that the bend was formed between the two bend lines.

That's it. I've added it to the list of small bits to be zinc plated later.

Pillar Drill

I've had a small pillar drill for about a year, and pretty cr@p it is too - but it was very cheap and it's a whole lot better than what I had before, which was a hand-held power drill in one of those bench stands.

This one works well enough, it has the usual stack of five pulleys and belt drive, belt tensioner, convenient power switch etc and you can set the table at an angle. But it is very flexible - the base and the table are pressed steel and the pillar is very thin - the whole thing will bend when you put any feed on.

The spindle is mounted in sealed bearings but once the quill descends it has quite a lot of play.

Here's the depth gauge and guard - this is hard plastic and broke almost the first time I used it. The depth gauge requires you to fiddle with those two nuts:

I decided to make a new mounting for the guard and depth gauge, but mostly because I want to do some boring in a big-end type arrangement (like a locomotive eccentric strap). The new mounting is made from two lengths of 10 x 30 mm aluminium bar, screwed together with two M4 screws and shaped to match the old one. Here, I am aligning the components with the lathe centre prior to drilling and boring a 40 mm hole to suit the journal on the pillar drill. The two halves of the clamp are spaced 1 mm apart, so they clamp securely to the drill:

Here it is in place, along with the broken bits of the original:

Tool Bench

Another day, another bench... This time, for some power tools - a bandsaw and a pillar drill, and maybe a bench grinder. Oh, and a big ol' vice... and... and...

4" x 2" battens (roof joists, out of a skip) secured with 6 off 8 mm frame fixes...

Top added - two pieces of thick beech-edged MDF (salvaged from my dad's garage), screwed to the battens. Legs also added, 3" x 2" pine, salvaged from an old door. Nothing actually paid for yet!

For future reference, the new tool bench is 1500 mm x 500 mm.

The ladies waited outside.