Finished My Offset Dowel Pins ........ Finger Brake

[JoeLee]

I finished the second one yesterday. One is off set by .022 and the other by .014. Took about 40 minutes to grind each end down from .437 to .375.
The setup in the 4 jaw took about 5 minutes or so.

JL.................

[mattthemuppet]

great finished you achieved there! Did they fix the issue you were having with the brake?

[JoeLee]

great finished you achieved there! Did they fix the issue you were having with the brake?

Yes............ I checked each side after mounting the apron.
I'm low by .001 on the right and .002 on the left. Don't know how that happened, probably the way I indicated it to get my pin offsets, but not going to complain. Close enough.
I did have to slightly elongate the bottoms of two bolt holes on the right side of the apron by .010 in order to get the bolt to go through and thread into the swing arm. That side was raised .022 so I knew I would have to do that. Didn't have to do that to the left side holes. They were slightly over sized to begin with for a 3/8" bolt.

Now it's on to building the fixture to grind the 45 deg faces and ends of the fingers.

JL..............

[Paul Alciatore]

Yes, that looks like a great job. Do post more progress photos and some when it is done.

[JoeLee]

Yes, I will post more pics of my progress. The worst part of this restoration job is over, the welding up of the dings and grinding of the top of the apron, finger plate bar and apron front bar which I just bought a 12' length of 3/4" x 1 1/2" CF bar and made a new one. All I had to do was grind the top edge and drill the holes. That was a whole lot quicker and easier than TIG,ing up all the deep dings on the original.

I still have to shim under the finger plate bar that sits behind the apron. It's low by about .004. No big deal. I lost .002 when I ground it.

The next step is to make a fixture to clean up and grind the 45 deg. faces and the ends of all the fingers. I made a wood pattern for size and fit.
The fixture will be able to sit at 45 deg for the angle and vertical for the edge of the fingers. I think I'm going to make it about 7" long so I will be able to group some of the smaller fingers and do them at the same time. The 6" fingers will of course have to be done individually.
I figure I will have to take off at least .006 across the fronts to clean them up. Not going to try welding up dings here. I'm going put some end slots on the sides of the fixture so I can mill the faces and then grind to clean up the mill marks. Not going to grind all that, too time consuming.



I've already done all the welding on the bottoms and front edges of the fingers.



And I have ground the bottoms. Did them all as a group. They are all exactly the same thickness now.



I hadn't planned on doing all this now but once I got into it I figured it was best to just keep going. I don't want to be spending all this time doing this during the summer.
When summer comes I want to be stripping and painting it. I had to set aside a couple ongoing projects when I got into this, story of my life........ my benches are full of interrupted projects.

JL................

[old mart]

Happy new year, it's nice to get on top of a difficult project, congratulations.

[JoeLee]

Happy New Year.......

JL................

[Dan Dubeau]

Nice work Joe. All this time I didn't realize your brake was the same as mine. When you're done I'll ship you mine to restore as well, it should go quicker the 2nd time .

I rescued mine from a hoarders junkpile that was heading to the scrap yard (along with a 36" shear, and a few other goodies), and it was locked up tight when I got it. It's freed now, but must have done some work for the yakuza at some point as it's missing some fingers, and is in pretty rough shape. I've only used it a couple times, but have never been bothered enough to take the restoration any further. Maybe one day I'll get a start on it. It's way down the list though.

[JoeLee]

Dan, Show me some pics of it. Di Acro made some changes throughout the years, mostly to the apron I believe.

I got lucky when I found this one. It's the first one that I've seen that wasn't all rusted up. Just a lot of small dings from normal use in an environment where the machinery and equipment isn't yours I suppose.

JL...............

[754]

Dan , I bet you got it cheap..good score..

[Dan Dubeau]

Dan , I bet you got it cheap..good score..

They were free for the taking. I wouldn't really call it a huge score though, as they are pretty much in scrap condition, but I saved them from the furnace and they do a good job of keeping my floor from blowing away. One of those right place right time sort of deals. Apparently this guy had been renting storage in this building for a few years to store some of his hoard, and had stopped paying rent for quite some time and the building owner couldn't get a hold of him (I'd heard later he ended up in a nursing home, and his house was a hoarders episode candidate). Owner was selling the building (old chicken house) and just needed it all gone pronto. My Dad's friend was cleaning it all out and we just happened to stop in for a visit at the right time as he was loading up his truck for another scrap run. There was boxes of tooling, drills, lathe bits etc that I just passed on as they were just too rusty to save . I also missed quite a few more tools that already made the trip to the scrapyard . Belt sanders, wood lathes, etc. Typical school shop stuff. A lot of it had already spent time outside though. At one time it would have been a pretty valuable lot of tools and tooling, but at that point it was all pretty much worthless. I saved what I could and waved by to the rest.

They might make a good restoration candidate some day, though not as thorough and nice as Joe's. More to just get them usable, as there's been plenty of times over the last couple years where they would have been handy for some quick jobs. I have used the brake a few times as is, but not the shear yet aside from some quick testing.

I did read there where 2 different designs of the brake when I started researching them years ago to machine the missing fingers, but don't remember any of the details. I think I've had them for about 7-8 years, and aside from freeing them up, I've only built a stand for them to live on and make them easier to move around. I haven't had a lot of free shop time the last few years (kids), but starting to get some back. I'll try and go out and snap some pics tomorrow.

[JoeLee]

It's sad when people leave good or decent tools / tooling just laying around under poor storage conditions for years until it's beyond salvage and pretty much worthless. I've seen it before too many times.
Now if the guy put it on ebay he could claim he had gold.

JL................

[JoeLee]

On a brighter note...... does anyone have any ideas on how I can set these fingers up to grind the 45 deg. faces before I commit to building a fixture to hold them??

A word of thought........I can't set them up off the bottoms because they are all slightly different. Apparently these fingers weren't all milled off the same piece of bar stock, or somewhere over time they got mixed up with others, replaced etc. They are all original with the exception of one 3/4" one that is questionable.

To be accurate in doing this the two reference surface are the top and the back. That's how they are held in the bar on the brake.

I have magnetic V blocks but they are too small for this, have a sine table too, but as I said I can't set them up off the bottoms.

JL.............

[Dan Dubeau]

Here's a couple pics of mine. It should make you feel much better about the great job you did on yours As you can see all the handles are missing too, and probably a few more thing I've yet to discover.




Sorry, I didn't move all the junk off them, as I would have just had to put it all back lol. A little messy in there right now....

[754]

I was expecting very rough , those both look quite good.
Joe weld up a fixture to grind them, might need it later..