Tools

Project 1: Large and Small Pokers

We started off working on our first project the second day of class. True, the project wasn't really that involved, but it was a good start introduction to what comes later. What is this project, you may ask? Well, it's a pair of pokers.

As you can tell, it's just a pair of dowel rods with needle springs stuck in one end. Simple enough, really. We were given a large dowel rod and a file and were told how to face the rod using the file and the bench motor. The next step was to bevel the edges with the file. The beveling was mostly to get rid of the burrs left on from where the rods were cut to the desired lengths and to give the piece a nice finish.

Next it was time to take the grinding wheel and grind a little point on the blunt end of the needle spring. Then we figured out where the center of the dowel rod was, measured our spring to figure out exactly how much spring needed to stick out at the end and prepped the dowel. Using force, we drove the spring into the dowel and hey, presto! We've got ourselves a poker.

Adventures with the Buffing Wheel

Before we could start working on re-padding some keys, we had to take some of our tools and sand down the edges so that they didn't rip pads or damage keys when they were in use. We started with 400 grit sand paper and sanded and sanded and sanded until you couldn't see the marks left by the manufacturer. We finished off the sanding with 600 grit sand paper and then it was buffing wheel time.

We buffed our tools until they were shiny like mirrors.

This is the other end of that tool that didn't get polished with the buffer.

This isn't the best picture, but I wanted to show case the mirror-like finish on the jaws of this pair of pliars.

Water Key Spring Installer

Since water key springs come au naturel, sometimes you need a little tool to help install them properly and this is where this little thing comes in handy.

It started off as a piece of straight brass, but was then heated (annealed) until it was soft enough to be bent into a "U" shape.

Burnisher

 

One of the tools we had to purchase for class was a burnisher, but it wasn't ready to use as it was.  To get it up to where it needed to be, I sanded and sanded and sanded to face until all the minor imperfections were gone and then used the strapper to get rid of the sanding marks.  The last step was to take it up to a mirror polish with the buffing wheel.  In the end I got it to look wonderful.