Millers Falls 12A

[AndyT]

At Richard Arnold's do, as well as all the interesting chat and demonstrations, there was a splendid selection of second hand tools to buy. I was especially pleased when Douglas (Condesteeso) brought in an interesting old breast drill, and helpfully guided it into my hands before it quite made it to the donations table...

He explained that it was a nice drill, but had some issues. Specifically, the knob that holds the handle on was broken, leaving a stub of screw deep inside a hole. I like a challenge like that!

I forgot to take a proper 'before' photo but this one shows the drill with the big bevel gear and the handle removed:

The gear is held on a big stud which passes through the casting and is then retained by the special screw.

I put some penetrating oil on the broken end and patiently left it overnight. The next day, I was able to remove the stub by the simplest method - I just pressed the rough, broken end of the other part up against it, and there was enough of a 'clutch' action for me to be able to undo it.

So, to the lathe, with an offcut of mild steel! Treadling time!

Truing up the surface

Cove cutting

Defining the size

Knurling

Filing to size

Thread cutting

Checking that it fits in the stud

Success!

File a slot

And open it out with the right size blade from the Slotting, Sawing, Scraping, Slitting tool (I do recommend these for jobs like this - they seem quite common and sell for not much.)

A successful project so far - more soon!

 

[condeesteso]

Very pleased this drill found it's proper home. I owned it a few years and in under one week, it's sorted. I recall the second handle was in need of a finish (didn't get around to that either). Excellent work, this drill deserved a better owner than me
And I hadn't seen those Eclipse slitting tools - handy, although the price has just gone up a good amount.

 

[toolsntat]

What's more I am also glad Andy had the the chance to get it sorted, as it would have sat in my box of things to get done, far to long
Well done Andy =D>

 

[AndyT]

Thanks guys. Sometimes it's nice to crack on with the new, interesting task, rather than face the old, stale one you've already put off dozens of times... So here's the rest of the story.

I spent a while studying the Millers Falls timeline at Randy Roeder's exemplary website. It shows the bewilderingly large range of options and tracks changes made over time. Using the information there, and this big clue on the chuck

I concluded that it's a model 12A, from between 1917 and 1921, which fitted with my initial guess of 'about a hundred years old'.

The catalogue description claimed "double ball thrust bearings with take up in case of wear" so I decided to see what exactly that meant.

Looking for a way to dismantle the business end, I found a pin to remove from the pinion, which came out quite easily. (Yes, I made sure that I was only tapping against the gear, supported on scrap mdf, and using the proper specialist pin remover tool.)

With the pin out, the knurled rings can be unscrewed, revealing some ball bearings inside

The pinion has a separate cone resting on it which runs against the balls. It's similar to the sort of bicycle hub bearing that I used to strip down and repair until I got a new bike with sealed bearings.

There was no significant wear as far as I could see - just an even bright wear stripe round the cones. After a bit of a spray round with some WD40 and plenty of wiping with a rag, I reassembled the bearings using some of my 'more than a lifetime' supply of bicycle grease

The claim about the wear adjustment was now clear. Both upper and lower bearings can be screwed up tight or undone a bit. I found what I thought was a sweet spot where everything spun freely but did not rattle. A pair of fine screws go through the casting to nip up against the internal shells and stop them undoing.

So here's the finished thing. I didn't make any attempt to change the paintwork - I just cleaned it and put a little wax on to keep it rust free.

How is it in use? Well, here you can see the invisible man drilling a hole with no hands while taking a photo, showing that yes, it works.

There are a few particularities though. Because it has a two jaw chuck, you need bits with a square taper shank, which mostly means bits for wood, unless you snap up others whenever you can

- but that's ok, I have other breast drills with three jaw chucks. (And of course, Millers Falls offered the #12 which was the same drill with a different chuck.)

In high speed mode, the little idler wheel made no contact with the gear wheel and was quite a long way away from it, which seems odd.
I liked the different length options on the handle - I think that's a more practical option than unscrewing the spindle to change gear positions. (I can see why later models swapped to a simpler catch for this.) It does run nice and smoothly.

One little question for the collective: there's a broad arrow and the letters MY on the crank:

I thought the arrow mark was only on UK/ Commonwealth armed forces kit - does that mean we were buying imported tools during WWI and that this is ex-military kit? What does "MY" mean? Except that it's MY DRILL NOW! :lol:

 

[Bm101]

Might interest you Andy. Bit of background
on the mark. http://www.wilkinsonfscollection.com/wi ... Arrow.html
Great restoration done well as always.
Regards
Chris

 

[AndyT]

Thanks Chris. I'd looked at that link and although it gives quite a long list of extra letters used with the Arrow mark, I couldn't see any mention of MY. Unfortunately it's a bit hard to search for.

 

[profchris]

A quick bit of online research tells me that in WWI the "M" might have referred to the Marylebone supply depot (no idea about the Y): http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forum ... pic=189331

Subsequently letters referred to dates (for some reason working backwards through the alphabet) so that M = 1944: http://www.warrelics.eu/forum/uniforms/ ... ng-268363/

Of course, more research would be needed to know if this transferred across to tools (the links are for uniforms), or even if these links are accurate, but they might give you a start.

 

[Rhyolith]

Nice restoration.

It is better to use grease in those thrust bearings? I have been using engine oil up until now.

I think I have one of these and it has the typical red paintwork and I think most earlier models had grey or black, so green suggests maybe something else? A mass import for the armed forces might justify a batch to be made with different colour schemes?

 

[AndyT]

There was old grease in there when I dismantled it so it was an easy decision to use grease. And it's much easier to reassemble something like this when you don't need to scrabble round the workshop floor for escaping balls...:wink:

 

[Rhyolith]

... scrabble round the workshop floor for escaping balls...:wink:

Thats never happened to me of course 8-[

 

[lanemaux]

Is that the Barnes you were working with there Prof? Wonderful to see the old girl being put to good use , and you seem to have come to terms with her beautifully. Nice bit of work amigo.

 

[AndyT]

Yes, the 4 1/2 in action. I think it's ideal for jobs like this. I don't like noisy motorised tools much at all but treadle power makes them possible. I wouldn't want to do filing or hacksawing in a powered lathe but with the Barnes I can take a blended approach safely.

What you don't see in the pictures is the amount of time I spend fiddling about changing tooling, fitting change gears, or just thinking about what order to do things in, but I'm not in a hurry!

And at the moment, each job like this is also a training exercise in learning to use the lathe.