The Winter #11 Update
Since my post in October, I had the chance to spend a few holidays at home, including a nice lengthy stay over the Christmas break. No new patterns (for #11) have been made, but each one that I had started still had a lot of finishing work to do.
One of the biggest hurdles was producing the core boxes and prints for the two journal boxes. In order to reduce the machinist workload as much as possible while maintaining good margins, I had to try out a different core box construction method. For both of the journals, the core box for the bottom half comes apart on all sides, negating the need for draft in the core box itself. Bernie's feedback regarding my ideas was indispensable- I wouldn't have been confident in attempting it without it. The cores were a bit of a brainbender to figure out how they would go together, while maintaining accuracy and repeatability but I am very happy with the results, and will be keeping this construction method in mind for future patterns.
The core box assembled:
And apart:
The lead truck journal is nearly a carbon copy in terms of pattern construction
The eccentrics have had a fair bit of work done. At last post, they had been roughed out, and were awaiting cleanup. In order to produce, I used a template and a follower along with a very long, 1/2" end mill to clean up the excess. At full extension, the end mill had a fair bit of chatter, reinforcing the reasoning behind using big end mills when you have to have a lot of extension. Too bad they won't fit in the router table! Nevertheless, it worked pretty dang well. I will also be keeping this in my back pocket in case it comes in handy for more complex interior shapes.
The eccentric, and it's template
On the router table. I only raised the end mill 3/16" per pass, but wanted to show how everything worked together.
At this point, the retaining ring rattled off, and the template guide got caught up in the end mill. It was terribly exciting. Fortunately, the template guide was the only casualty, but I had to stop at this point until a new guide could arrive.
While I wasn't able to make the three more patterns I'd hoped for #11, I did spend some time making a few new patterns for another project that's in the works. All of the other patterns received a lot of clean up work and attention. Applying the fillets takes a fair bit of time, and with everything all batched together, there were many days just spent filleting, and cleaning them up. All of the patterns (save one) are now either being finished, or are being prepped for finishing. As much as I loathe the finishing process, it's great to see things wrapping up. I had been worried that I bit off more than I could chew this year, and I think everything should come together just in time for a trip Down East this summer. I'll be glad to free up my bench space, but the car is going to be pretty full this year!
