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More finishing details to take care of. First, I made ten new hand made screws for the plates -- six for the vertical plates and four more to hold the vertical plates to the upper horizontal plate. I made these screws in the Enco 9x20 lathe, from cold-rolled steel.
I slot the screws by hand using a Junior miniature hack saw. If one is careful, the slots are as neatly made as if they were cut with a slitting saw on a milling machine. I polished them with successive grades of silicon carbide sand paper at a high speed in the Taig lathe. Small lathes can be made to run very fast, which is good for polishing.
I blued these screws with a heat gun. In order to get a good blue, the screws must be free of finger prints and oil. A good degreaser to use is acetone.
I also sawed the vertical plates into their final form. I made use of the Deltacad templates still glued to the brass of the plates to saw out windows in the back plate. I made some adjustments to the template drawings, since the positions of the pivot holes didn't turn out to be exactly the same as shown on the templates. After sawing, I finished the edges of the plates with a Dremel tool in a router table, as shown in an earlier installment.
I had also drafted windows in the front plate, but found that there are too many screw and pivot holes to make sense piercing this plate. Besides, the dial covers the front plate.
I made plexiglass "boxes" for finishing the plates. I used successively finer silicon carbide sand paper to produce a good finish on the plates. As a final, I used 8 micron paper, which, if my math is correct, is about 2500 grit. I found that if the paper is run dry, the finish is finer. Then I used Simichrome polish for the final finish.
I have found an excellent lacquer for finishing plates. It's made to finish brass band instruments by the Nikolas company. It doesn't show, doesn't orange peel, and doesn't run. You can find it on the internet.
I also made a final addition to the escapement. Simply a small collar which holds the escapement blade on its post. A small collar made with still another 0-80 set screw. Today's links:
Plates 1
Plates 2
Plates 3
Plates 4
Escapement 1
Escapement 2
Plexi boxes