Time, for the front wheel spokes and then I can assemble the front wheels for the miniature traction engine.
Brass blanks cut out using my slightly modified bandsaw table.
I’ve cut out 24 brass blanks.
The next stage is to bolt them together so that I can machine them to the right shape.
I clamped an engineers square to the pillar drill table to give me two reference edges. Thus allow me to slide the brass up the corner and drill each one at the same location.
By the way, that is not a huge engineers square, it’s my tiny Unimat 3 pillar drill.
Milling the edges of the sets of brass spokes. They are bolted together in sets of 6 and the bolts clamped in the vice. This way I need 2 of these sets for each wheel.
I’m using a tungsten carbide endmill in my Sieg SX2.7 milling machine.
I aligned the position of the brass strips to the end of the vice, thus allowing me to mill the spoke down to 4mm width. Leaving the larger section on one end.
This is a delicate machining operation and so use a high speed, sharp carbide end mill and small cuts.
All of the spokes now have the right section.
I then marked the spokes, 20.6mm centre section and 4mm in from each end to give the flat section on the rim and hub respectively.
The hole is 1/16th of an inch to accept the rivet. The front wheel spokes are all bent at each end to 20 degrees, 4mm in from each end.
And so on to assembly of the wheels…