The book won't lead you far wrong except the gear centres are already bored to finished size so Masons gear centre marking tool isn't universal without mods.

Follow Mason's way of forming the keyway on the Crank shaft gear cluster and you won't go far wrong and no strain on any machine. The others are quite small and short so can be planed with the carrage. But with cheaper broaches being available from some of the ME suppliers worth thinking of getting the proper item.

As for riviting there are very few that will need a CSK hole, a few at the top of the smokebox spring to mind but the rest will want a formed "snap" head to match the supplied had at the other end. So plain lightly deburred holes.

Softjaws are ideal if you need to chuck the gears to work on the bores and just a couple of simple bushes will allow Mason's depthing tool to be used. Though as most of us now have mills one gear can be held in the spindle and rotated against the previous which is better than trying to pick up a scribed line left by the depthing tool.

Edited By JasonB on 22/02/2021 07:44:21

Some old timers used to run a belt from the countershaft to a pulley attached to the first gear in the train on the change gear quadrant. This was usually done to provide finer feed than the standard change gears allowed but it could be adapted to power the leadscrew without rotating the chuck. You would have to take off the main belt between the countershaft and headstock spindle. And make sure quadrant was positioned so gears are not engaged with the headstock spindle gear. So when you start the motor, the countershaft turns and powers the change gears via the second belt to the pulley there. I suppose if you had reversing motor you could even power back feed.

When l started my Minnie (still unfinished) l built a hand-operated Slotting Attachment, described in ME, which was mounted on the lathe saddle, l ran a Drummond "B" at the time. l later modified it for an ML10. l can't remember which issue it was described in though but likely to be late 80s/90s.

l also attempted to make the Hand Rivet Squeezers described by A Mellor in ME for 15/5/87 and 6/5/88.

l seem to recall that these were specifically for the Minnie TE.

Hope this might be of some help.

Further:- The hand-operated slotting attachment, by R J Cochrane appeared in ME V 152 No. 3720 of 1984 and l needed to make a pattern and get the casting done locally. A useful accessory indeed.

Do a lot of practice rivets:

Shorten each rivet by a known amount per step until it looks right. Then shorten all rivets accurately to the same length. That way one achieves consistency:

I chose to make my own fixtures and rivet snaps:

Finished rear wheels:

Andrew

Unless making one of the large scale models the rivits are not heated as they would loose the heat by the time you had got them into the hole and the snap will also act as a heatsink. As supplied they are annealed so should be soft enough to set cold.

No Loctite. As the head is formed the shank of the rivit will also expand outwards to take up any difference between it's diameter and that of the hole, hence my comment earlier that you may need a little more length if the fit is slack.

There are a number of ways to do the wheels, as you have a DRO you could step out the middle spoke hole using the PCD function or co-ordinates from Zeuz book and then make a jig to locate the other two spoke holes off the central one. If splashing out on new equipment I would say a rotary table will get more use than a dividing head for things like milling the slots in the hubs, curved cuts in the expansion link etc

I spotdrilled and then used a ballnose slotdrill in the lathe. With a range of metric and imperial slotdrills one can get pretty close to the actual size. Odd sizes, particularly 32nds or even 64ths, are often on Ebay at minimal cost.

I CNC milled and drilled my own spokes. The rivet patterns are copied from full size rather than the drawings. For the front wheels the 3 holes are on an arc, not a straight line. On the rear wheels the 4 rivets are zig-zag, not in a line. The rivets are 3/16" which is conveniently close to 2BA. The holes in the T-rings were marked out by hand. I scribed a circumference around the T-ring with oddleg calipers at the distance in determined by my 3D CAD model. I also knew the theoretical distance from spoke to spoke from the CAD model. I set that distance on dividers and stepped round the previously scribed line until I go back to the start. If everything didn't quite line up I adjusted the dividers and had another go. Once marked out I spot punched and drilled free hand using the vertical mill. I used a fixture to fit the spokes on each side in turn:

The hub is sitting on a spigot screwed to the plate. The rim is centred on the hub as best as possible with a rule. Note the 2BA screws. Once a set of spokes are fitted it is simple to drill through the other holes on the spokes. I drilled the spokes and T-rings 4.7mm, ie, a tad undersize. When riveting was underway I ran a 3/16" drill through each hole in the spoke/rim before fitting each rivet. Generally after drilling the rivets needed a slight tap with a brass rod to get them inserted.

Fitting the spokes on the rear wheels was similar except that the rims needed blocking up different amounts on each side, and on each wheel. Since the rear spokes are on the inside of the T-rings one can't spot through for the additional holes. I used a fixture based on a spare spoke and a block that straddled the fitted spoke. A 2BA bolt held everything together for drilling each spoke:

Generally the wheels won't fit on my 12" rotary table, but I did fudge it to drill one row of holes in the rim as a starter for the rear wheel strakes:

It isn't obvious if the spokes are a 1/16" or so out, but a 1/16" offset on the strakes would be glaring.

When setting the rivets the expansive force generated by the shank can be enough to distort the T-ring:

My methods are pretty crude, but probably better than the original builders used.

Andrew