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Clock Spring Tool

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75Plus:
Several years ago I designed a tool to service the mainsprings in old, 8 day and antique clocks. These springs are quite strong and can be dangerous to handle. The tool I designed was made mostly of wood and could be duplicated in whole or in part by anyone handy with tools. I have made the drawings available, free of charge, to all who requested them. I also sell complete units and just the metal parts that require metal working tools to fabricate. Today I had to put one together for a customer so I made a few pictures as I went along. Hope some of you find this of interest.
 
I precut all the parts for several winders at one time and assemble them as needed.

Here is the parts I will be putting together today.



I found the job goes faster if I have a few jigs to help with the repetitive operations. Here is one of my drilling jigs.



Here I have drilled all the necessary holes and countersunk them for flat head screws.



Moving to the assembly bench I have a fixture for holding the parts while drilling pilot holes and screwing the parts together.



Here is another drilling fixture that speeds up making some of the parts.



I have a trim router dedicated to making the mortice for the gear on spring barrels.



At this point I get into machining parts. Actually only one part, the crank/chuck assembly is machined to any extent. I start with a common 0-1/4 tee handled tap wrench which i modify. I remove the tee handle and plug the hole. I then reduce the end to 11/32" so it will press into a 11/32" hole drilled in a 5" piece of aluminum round stock. After trying several different ways of holding the tap wrench on center I finally settled on a split bushing to clamp it in the lathe. It comes in true enough for my purposes each time I chuck one up.



And another view in the lathe.



I turn a spigot for the handle and then pin the handle to the shaft.



Another fixture holds the shaft so I can drill through the center of it and the spigot I turned on the tap wrench so these two parts can be pinned. I drill down through the set screw so it is perfect every time.



And here is the finished winder. I leave the painting to the proud owner as painting/varnishing is not something I do well.



There is a short clip of the operation on Flickr. I hope this link works for those who might be interested. There is no audio with the clip.

http://www.flickr.com/photo_embed.gne?id=3134426494

I think I'm done!!!

Joe

sbwhart:
Nice work  :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

Thanks for showing

Stew

dsquire:
Joe

Very interesting piece and nice jigs for drilling and assembly. Your link didn't work directly for me but by searching I finally did manage to find it. Here is the link that worked for me. all 4 lines of it. Just cut and paste and hopefully it will work for you.  :lol: :lol:

http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3D3134426494%26ei%3Dutf-8&w=500&h=375&imgurl=static.flickr.com%2F3078%2F3134426494_38cc913940.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fclk_101%2F3134426494%2F&size=106k&name=Mainspring+Winde...&p=3134426494&oid=7882fe465998bc0c&fr2=&fusr=Joe%27s++Pic%27s&no=1&tt=1&sigr=11ghij8eg&sigi=11g2l51f4&sigb=122gc8cpe

Cheers  :beer:

Don

raynerd:
Hey Joe - nice job. I don`t know how I missed this thread months ago but I did! Excellent work, looks great!

Brass_Machine:
That is neat. Could it be used to wind other types of springs or coils?

Eric

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