The Dale C. Maley Family Web Site

I completed all of the wood models in the book by Raymond Levy, and completed all the locks in the 2 books by Tim Detweiller.....so I am out of patterns to make any more small wood models.

I ran across the book 507 Mechanical Movements by Henry Brown which is a reprint of a book first written in 1868. I went through this book looking for ideas to design new wood models using these old 1868 mechanical devices. One of the concepts I found was the pulverizer:

The rotating element raises the pulverizer head up and down. Since I am also trying to learn Google's free Sketchup 3D drafting software, I designed my wood model of the pulverizer. Shown below is my 1st attempt:

This model is too big compared to my other wood models.  Most of the other wood models are 8" cubed....and my 1st attempt was 12" inches tall.  I then redesigned it to fit into a smaller package:

The red pulverizer is 3" on bottom tapering up to 2" on top to give it a lot of weight (to make more noise when it pulverizes).  The main vertical shaft is 3/4" diameter to give it more weight also. I decided to pin the elements together with either 1/4" or 1/8" dowels for easy assembly and dis-assembly. The crank shaft goes into a hole in the lower bearing, which eliminates the need for 2 more bearing pieces for this shaft.

A couple things happened during the build phase of this model. My original plan was to glue the African red padauk glued blank to a piece of pine with cardboard in between. The cardboard separated from the high force of turning the end grain. I finished the pulverizer piece using the 4 jaw chuck.  I also forgot to make the vertical back piece slightly less wide than the base for better appearance like the Levy models.

Even though I had glued the back piece to the base piece, I decided to fix it and have the 1/4" gap on each side of the base piece for the upright piece. I sawed the glued 2 pieces with the table saw, then hand planed and sanded the remains of the glued upright piece onto the base.  I glued back together, using square to make sure they were really 90 degrees.  It now looks like the Levy models with respect to the back being 1/2" thinner than the base.

I also made the purple cam piece a straight piece at 1st.  But after I built the model, it took a lot of force to turn the crank and raise the pulverizer.  I decided to design and make another purple cam piece more like the 1886 concept drawing to the crank force increased slower, making it easier to crank.

Here is the pulverizer assembled and ready for final sanding and varnishing:

Here is the pulverizer after 1st coat of polyurethane.....with most parts hanging from my temporary drying rack:

And here is finished pulverizer:

 Link to Jacob Maley operating the Pulverizer.