Repairing an early 1900’s metal lathe
The Floyd R. Saurer Blacksmith Shop is among the original eight historic buildings donated to the Kidron Historical Society. The shop was built in 1906. John F. Moser bought the building in 1912 and added a buggy shop. He eventually hired Floyd R. Saurer to work as an apprentice and Saurer soon after bought the business and building from Moser. Floyd Saurer continued to own and operate the blacksmith shop until closing its doors in 1967.
The shop was left undisturbed exactly as Floyd Saurer left it when he closed the doors. Volunteers spent almost two years tagging, cleaning, and cataloging all the items in the shop for storage until the blacksmith shop could be moved. Then work began to reinstall all the tools and equipment in the Blacksmith Shop just as it was when Floyd Saurer closed the doors in 1967.
One of these items was a pedal based metal lathe. Over the years, several of the gears were damaged, missing teeth, etc. Machinist Rick and blacksmith Walt, both volunteers of KCHS took an interest in restoring the lathe to a “showable” working condition.
They took measurements of the damaged gears, then used a free online gear generator to create a 2D vector image with the correct number of teeth, tooth pitch, etc. This looks like a pencil drawing of the gear. This flat image was imported into a CAD program which easily converted it to a three dimensional actual gear shape by adding “thickness” to the flat image, then saved in STL format compatible with 3D printing.
Our trusty Makerbot Replicator produced three different gears that needed replaced on the lathe. Rick & Walt confirmed that they fit perfectly on the machine! These were made with PLA plastic, not a strong material for this type of use. The final step is printing gears with harder material such as nylon to withstand the force of operating the lathe for demonstration purposes. Good job, Rick & Walt!
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