English Wheel Mods

I spent most of the weekend working on getting the english wheel up to par. I spent 8 hours on Saturday machining the top wheel on the lathe with my wife's grandfather. It was about .009" out of round when we started. We got round with a side to side difference of .002". The steel was really hard in some places and soft in others, so machining was really difficult. We wound up taking a belt sander with 220 grit and using it to get a nice even finish across the face of the wheel.

I also built my superstructure while we were waiting on the lathe. I used 2-1/2"x 2-1/2" x 1/4" square tube for the vertical and horizontal pieces. I used 2-1/2"x2-1/2" x 1/4" angle for the diagonal brace. I used the factory bolt hole at the bottom and added two bolts on the vertical member of the wheeling area and two on the horizontal member of the machine. The assembly made the machine incredibly stiff. It is like a completely different tool now.

I also began polishing up the faces of my panishing hammer, it's two bottom dies, my main dolly and my favorite body hammer. I bought a set of 3 polishing wheels and black, white and blue compounds over the w/e so I could polish up my tools and the anvils of the e-wheel.

I'll have pics tomorrow.