2004-11-20


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The finish-debur-dimple team in action.
Molly wanted to dimple.
Kathryn wanted me to get a picture of Henry watching the dimpling. Henry is sitting on the vise. (In case you didn't spot him)
One of the things I was dreading was cutting the lead weight. I figured that a hacksaw would do it. Well, it did, but not without a LOT of effort.
After I got it cut off, I noticed that there was this big void. It was really huge. The lead weight had a big hollow spot in it. Well that wasn't going to do, I had to fill it. SO I swept up all of the lead shavings that I had from drilling and sawing lead and got ready to melt them.
Now, if you are planning to do this yourself, let me give you one important piece of advise. Ask your wife for a steel spoon that she doesn't want anymore. Don't just take one. You will be ruining a priceless heirloom that's been in the family since 1882, personally handcrafted by Sir Henry Bessemer himself.

I place the filings in the spoon and heat it up. I heat it quite a bit, until the spoon itself is almost glowing red.

Then I dump it out onto a piece of steel that's been setup with a little slope to it. This separates the lead from the crap. The steel takes the heat away from the lead almost instantly. Put the spoon down someplace far away so that you don't pick it up again. It'll stay hot for some time.

I then pick the good pieces of lead and throw out the bad. After the spoon is cool enough to touch, I cleaned it with a screwdriver and then steel wool. I put the good pieces of lead in the spoon and heat it up again. 

I then dumped the melted lead into the void in the counterweight. It also cooled instantly so I filed it flat.

That's better!
The next step on the right elevator is to prime it all. Before I do that I'll build the left elevator so I can finish all of the priming at once.

Here are some bits of the left elevator in the process of fabrication. I'll get back to it tomorrow.