Horse drawn Galion road grader circa. 1913?

[Kim]

Amazing work, George! I always love following your builds!  (Pass the popcorn, Chris!)
Kim

[ozzie46]

 Fabulous.

Here's me packing up my tools and having a garage sale and sneaking out the back door.

Never be able to come close to this.

Ron

[gbritnell]

Hi Ron,
Be proud of what you do. We do the best we can with the tools and experience. There are people who are steps above me and I could never reach their plateau but I certainly can appreciate their work.
gbritnell

[ozzie46]

Oh, I'm not quitting. That was just my feeble attempt at humor. Sorry.

Ron

[gbritnell]

Hi Ron,
I realize you were only kidding but a lot of times I have heard fellows say that they could never do this or that and I tell them at least they are building.
gbritnell

[fumopuc]

Hi George,
I have had the opportunity today for a better look in all the details you have shown us in this posting so far.
It is a real pleasure to see all this tiny part coming out of the stock.
I appreciate it very much that you are taking the time to show us your set ups and the way how it can be done.
Really a great job and much to learn.

[gbritnell]

The original machine has a big spring that supports the tongue. If it were just any spring I could wind one and be done with it but this spring has a square cross section to the coils. Now I guess I could have said "that's too hard to make" but I came up with an idea that I thought might work.
Have you ever drilled out a broken screw by using just a slightly undersize drill? Sometimes when you're lucky the remaining threads just unscrew.
So using that premise I first went to my drawing and calculated the threads per inch, 13. My lathe will cut 13 tpi. I ground up a high speed lathe tool that would give me the proper width and turned the stock to size. I then threaded the rod going down to depth. The tool is only .036 wide and the first time I tried it the tool snapped off. I reground it but this time only allowed .05 for the projection. The second attempt went much better and I made 2 passes at each depth so it would clean up the cut before going deeper. When I was satisfied with the results I turned a sleeve to go over the O.D. It had a couple of thousands clearance figuring that the next step might swell the piece. I center drilled and drilled leaving about .02 stock in the hole. I then drilled about .005 larger than the depth of the threads. The sleeve slid off with no trouble. There was a tiny bit of flash inside the spring so a couple of passes with a smooth rat tail file cleaned it up nicely. I annealed about 1 coil on the ends so that I could compress it and make a square end.
The spring has 2 looped rods (.039 dia.) that go through the center and hook onto the end of the spring. The first one was bent up and it went through fine but that didn't leave much room for the other one. After a little bit of coaxing and tweaking I got the other looped rod through.

[gbritnell]

There is a triangular bracket at the front of the frame. It is supported on the frame side by 2 straps (.170 wide x .025 thick) The problem is the straps are bent at the ends to align with the frame and the bracket. There is no way to just anneal and bend the stock like that so I experimented with a small piece of it. I cut a notch with a jeweler's saw leaving about .03 material. I then used a small jeweler's file. I think it's called a knife style. The sides are slightly tapered. I then filed the notch to the proper angle here again not going all the way through. I then bent the stock to the proper angle and silver soldered the small gap. That worked fine so once I had both pieces done I clamped them in place and gave myself a line from the triangular support. I then notched them like the first time and silver soldered the second joint.
From the triangular bracket there is another piece of strapping that goes down toward the spring. The spring is held to this strap with a clevis. I annealed a piece of .039 rod and formed it around the shank of a .052 diameter drill. The bolt going through it is M1.2 x .25. I made yet another square headed bolt and nut to hold the clevis to the strap.
Just a few more parts and the front end of the machine will be complete.

[gbritnell]

It's kind of after the fact but here's are several pictures of the full sized machine taken of the spring and clevis attachment.

[crueby]

That spring....  My brain just exploded... Scraping it off the walls...




Wow.   

[Craig DeShong]

This grader is just GORGEOUS George.  I’m fascinated as I watch this model come together.

[gbritnell]

 I don't know how many of my fellow modelers have worked with sheet metal but it frustrating in the fact that when you're machining you just cut or drill to a dimension and you're done with it. With sheet metal you calculate where a bend should be and try to take into account the amount of metal that the bend takes up and you still end up making 2 pieces, the first one to see how it's going to come out and the second one that should be correct.
 This machine has so many brackets and plates made from sheet metal and at times it would be nice to have 3 hands instead of two, One to hold the part, one to measure and one to scribe a line where it's supposed to line up with something else.
 I have completed all the brackets (if you want to call them that) and got them mounted to the frame. The large one at the operators platform is a fabrication of 6 parts. It has to mount to the frame approximately where it's supposed to and the shafts that pass through the bearing blocks have to be in line with the center of the machine. The top shaft which has a steering wheel runs all the way from the operator's platform to the front triangular support.
 When I started on the grader and completed the drawings I tried to make the shafts a size that were close to scale but more importantly that they were available. I have been dealing with a company out of New Jersey (Precision Scale Model Engineering). The stock material that I have never been able to find anywhere else.
 Anyway, enough background. Here's some pictures of the actual machine and then pictures of the model and where I'm at.

[gbritnell]

 The steering wheel rim is .084 diameter stock. It's 1.75 inside diameter. I tuned up a piece of bar stock with a small step to hold the rim for soldering. I annealed a piece of stock and formed it around the bar being careful to get the ends to just meet so that they could be silver soldered. After soldering and cleanup I put the ring back on the fixture bar and lightly tapped it with a piece of hardwood to try and make it as round as possible. The spokes are .062 diameter. On the fixture bar I cut grooves to the proper depth so when assembling the spokes would line up with the center of the rim. I also cut relief pockets where the spokes meet the rim. The fixture bar is aluminum and will suck all the heat away from the joints so I hoped the pockets would prevent this. I turned and drilled the hub and made up the four spokes. The spokes were carefully filed for a nice fit. The joints were fluxed and soldered. The last step was to turn up a speed knob and mount it to the rim.
The ends of both shafts were drilled in my fixture block so that a M1 x .25 square head bolt could be used to hold the U-joints on.
 

[Kim]

That's a fine looking steering wheel, George!
The time and effort you put into each part really shows.
Kim

[kvom]

We know how hard working with the sheets and rivets are, but if it was easy we wouldn't be as impressed.