Gallery, Projects and General > How do I??

vial for a machinist's level

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jcs0001:
I recently purchased two machinist levels at prices I could not ignore.  Don't really need them but they are really a classy tool!

One, of course the 8 in. is in excellent shape and in it's original box with clasp - it's a Moore & Wright.  The 12 in. model is a lufkin and the vial has a crack so the bubble is very long.  The other two small vials are good.  I have looked through ebay and online searches and the best that I can find is that the main vial for a 12 in. starrett is likely the same as the one for the lufkin.  However even finding a starrett vial seems to be difficult.

Considering my cost I'm quite sure I can get my money back selling the Lufkin as is without the main vial working.  However if I can find a vial for a reasonable price I'd give it a try to repair it.

Two questions:
- anyone know of a source for a vial.
- there was a posting on Madmodder a long time back about repairing a machinist's level (vial replacement) however it appears that the photos are missing.  It can be seen here:

http://madmodder.net/index.php?topic=2197.0

I'd appreciate a link to any other "tutorials" regarding vial replacement.

Thanks,

John.

jcs0001:
I did find another forum posting about replacing a starrett vial:

http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/threads/21510-Starrett-Model-98-Level-Vial-Replacement-amp-Adjustment?s=30d60daa1e9533d801ebfb5be45ab9b5

John.

Pete W.:
Hi there, John,

I suggest you have a look at http://www.leveldevelopments.com/.

There was some discussion of engineers' levels on the Model Engineering site a few months ago, try here:  http://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/postings.asp?th=102987&p=5

I hope this helps. 

jcs0001:
Pete:

Thanks for the information.  Just what I was looking for.  I think my first step is to remove the old vial (intact if possible) to get an idea of size.  I'll take some photos when I do this.  It may be a while as I've got a list a mile long of things to do.

John.

jcs0001:
I decided to take the lufkin apart.  It's a Lufkin no. 58 machinist's level - 12 in. long.  The main vial is cracked and leaking and the collar rotates a little too easily.



Once the vial holder was off the body I held the flat on one end in a vice and turned the other end with a wrench - in case the end caps were threaded in.  Apparently the 12 in. starrett equivalents are press fit but I didn't want to wreck it in case it was threaded.  It turned however broke the vial glass (no loss) and the end cap didn't thread outwards.  I made the assumption from this that it also was press fit.  Being fully committed now I needed to come up with a simple puller.

A bit of thought and lunch and I came up with a jig to pull the end caps (one anyway) off.  Not very high tech but it did work without breaking anything and was very controlable.   I first turned down some 5/16 in. drill rod so that the holes in the caps just fit the rod.  Two pieces were made.  In the photo below the drill rod holders are not inside the screw clamps:



The drill rod fit like so:


It isn't fancy but did hold quite well inside the clamps once they were tightened up.

I used 3/8 in. threaded rod and gradually used the two nuts to push the blocks of wood away from each other.   The nuts are the ones on the left side of the second photo. It took a considerable amount of force before the plug started to move but was easy after that.  The drill rod bent a bit before the plug came out.

Once the one end plug was removed the outside barrel slipped off revealing two very fine wires in a groove at each end of the vial holder.  They are supposed to prevent the outside barrel from spinning easily - giving a little bit of friction to hold it in position.  Not sure if a little judicial bending will improve the friction or not.

John.

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