I picked up a set of castings from John Buckwalter in Paisley, FL and they are beautiful! I spread them out on my work bench only to realize the mountain of machine work ahead of me! I have most of the tooling and I’m ready to go – this is going to be fun!
The piece of wood in the trunk is a hunk of Florida red oak which I’ll cut down for the front and rear buffers (or bumpers).
The only thing missing in the photo is the engine block which was cast and received a few weeks later. I can confirm that it is one heavy chunk of iron!
Since there are a total of eight wheels, I decided to try and knock them out first. Once turned, they will come in handy when it’s time to build the trucks and give the frame something to sit (and roll) on. The treads will be turned last.
In order to get a high degree of accuracy when turning the axles, it’s vital that my lathe centers are as close to dead-on as possible, so I fabricated an “old school” test bar out of some scrap steel and aluminum. I was able to get the lathe centers within .00015″ – more than accurate enough for my purposes.
Here’s the first axle after being turned…
…and here’s the first axle assembled with wheels and bearings.