The Dale C. Maley Family Web Site

I found a new book with more plans for making wooden models. It is Building Wooden Machines by Bridgewater.

The first model I decided to build is the cam and fork machine. Here is a photo from the book:

 I entered the model into Google Sketchup:

 The shaft support stands are designed to be 1" thick stock, so I had to glue up 2 pieces of 3/4" thick as blanks. The mounting stand for the crank is also 1" thick, so it required a glued blank also. I decided to use purpleheart for the cam to add some color to the model. I glued 2 scrap pine pieces to the purpleheart, so I could easily plane it down to the 5/16" thick design, using the power planer.

 For the follower fork, I drilled the main shaft hole in the blank before I scroll sawed out the fork.

 Here I am doing a trial fit of all the parts to make sure the model works ok............

 I turned the crank handle using the lathe.

Fixture for Drilling the Bearing Supports

 I made a fixture, as the book recommends, for drilling the angles dowel holes in the bottom of the bearing supports:

 Testing Function

 I tested the function of the assembly before final gluing and clamping.

 I used wood dye to add some more colors to the model. I also substituted round wood balls at the end of the reciprocating shaft instead of the 3/4" dowel pieces shown in the book.

I marked where the crank stand should be glued using blue painter's masking tape. I then sanded the base to remove the polyurethane....to get a good glue joint.  I then used the trick of string plus a big 16d nail wound up to apply clamp pressure to the crank stand. You can see the big nail on the right side of the picture below:

 Finished Project

 I also made a Youtube video showing this model in action:

 Final Thoughts on this Project

This was a fun little project to build.  The angled dowel pins that hold down the bearing supports are a different look. They did not hold down the bearing supports any better that vertical dowel pins, but they look cool. The yellow balls, blue dowels, and green dowels add some good colors to the model.

========================================================