I forgot to add a photo of how it looks at the moment, no massive improvement yet but making progress with the de rusting. It is sat in an oil slick, I am trying to keep the damp at bay. The cheese head fasteners at the ends of the slides are 2BA or possibly Thury which I learn was a Swiss thread the standards of which BA was based on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thury_thread which has a slightly different thread form so may account for the slight play in the fasteners.
I need to make two replicas of the plastic handle seen above for the two missing control arms, what would be a good material to form on the lathe? Red delrin was I plan but I am open to other ideas.
Coming along nicely, I just looked back at the very first pic in the thread...what a difference . I thought that handle was wood with a brass ferrule when I looked at the pic, would they have used plastic back in the 30s? How about making all three from something like mahogany, then you'd have a proper matching set? It shouldn't be a huge task (or expensive) for a 'wood-botherer' to turn the set?
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/872...BY0QUmWPtQJp1QnhrxSuPG9QFFOq8tLUaAivMEALw_wcB Rather nice... Dave H. (the other one)
The one remaining original handle is a red plastic material, I have seen them with handles re made in aluminium (the one @gaz1 linked to above ) but that to me does not look right and fitting though it would be easy to do. The two on Tony's site have a mixture of steel handles with plastic panels or turned brass. The pretty original one which is near identical to mine owned by https://www.instagram.com/horlogerie_dubuis/ has the same bronze cast arms with red plastic handles. No doubt over time they would have changed the material used but red plastic looks like the way it was made.
It is, I don't really want it and would never have bought it. I will probably get it cleaned up and build a counter shaft / motor mount for it and move it on. Which is why I want to keep it as original as I can unlike the Drummond which I feel is mine so I can modify it or paint it metallic blue I don't have to please anyone else.
A good question, so I went looking, the history of plastics is older than I had thought. 1872 -PVC 1889 - Celluloid 1890 - Casein 1898 - Polyethylene 1907 - Bakelite 1912 - Cellophane 1930 - Neoprene 1930 - Polystyrene 1935 - Nylon 1938 -PTFE So yes plenty of plastics available to 1930's Swiss machine tool makers. The above list are date of discovery / invention so commercial use may have been slightly later but non the less it was not just Bakelite the world has access to in the 30's.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Art-Deco...029341?hash=item3dae4911dd:g:S~sAAOSw061fmtsB https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-...094693?hash=item44667ab825:g:S~sAAOSw9qJacL9u red is via kitchen gear
Almost spit my coffee out. https://pennyfarthingtools.co.uk/hauser-horizontal-vertical-mill/2020/09/08/ That would explain the Admiralty connection, and gives me more ideas for a counter shaft assembly but that is a ludicrous price. Edit: Forget the price comment I've just seen what they have been selling for in Europe, admittedly with a full set of collets but E2000 to E4000. Collets are expensive but not a grands worth.
That was after one etch primer and one coat of VHT wrinkle paint which went on last week end. If it warms up a bit this afternoon I will give them another coat of VHT. At the moment the finish is as I want in parts but it is not consistent.
This afternoon's experiments with the VHT wrinkle paint. This time I warmed the metal with a fan heater, sprayed the paint and then put the fan heater back on the on the wet paint, as it has starting to form a skin I moved the fan heater closer which has formed a smaller more even pattern. I think I have got a finish that I am happy with on smaller parts but the larger bronze castings needed to be plied with a hot air gun to force a similar effect. The paint is actually a nice solid black but does not photograph well that close up.
Progress report on the little mill: Not a lot of progress in the last two months, I did find a photo of a similar mill that had been dismantled and have tried to scale missing parts for my mill from the dimensions of known parts. These are the two rods needed to control left to right movement of the milling table. And my poor attempts at drawing up the parts needed. Which I shall make from scrap steel strip to check dimensions before going to the effort of filing the correct profile into new material, all measurements in drawing in metric for convenience. I will check and update the fastener sizes as I go, they are a strange mix of BSW, BA and some odd ball ones, something I have got used to with the old Drummond though as Switzerland was entirely metric from 1868 who knows what was going on.
Coming along nicely. Wrinkle finish looks really good too. I wouldn't worry about any imperfections, the most important thing is that it weathers well and develops a "well used quality" look.
Looks like my scaled measurements were a little off This was my mock up in scrap made to the drawing above, it works but I am loosing about an inch of travel to the left, mk11 version got back all but a 1/4" of travel on the left without loosing any on the right but I was on the limit of travel of the lever so more fine adjustments needed before I make the final version. I did think that the taper gib had somehow tightened whilst moving the table but it turned out to be the pivot between the two arms was binding, the bolt was tightening itself when the table was moved to the right. I was eventually going to make a shoulder bolt for the final version but this will now be made before any more adjustments to the arms are made.
