Adventures in Watchmaking  

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Face Plate Clamps

Starting with a section of 3/4" C360 brass rod in the 3-jaw chuck, it is faced, center drilled, drilled for the clearance of an M5 socket-head screw and counter-bored to accept the head.

I then chamfered it for aesthetics, and parted it off using the rear tool post with an inverted cut-off bit.

An off center screw is needed to level the clamp while in use.  I simply scribed a mark with a compass on each of the 3 clamps and drilled a 2.5mm hole in each using the drilling pad in the tailstock.  I tapped these holes with an M3 hand tap. To fit these, and I made several M3 set screws from 3mm O1 drill rod, and cutting a slot with a screwhead file.  This seems like a good time to show the Cowells thread cutting setup.  The die holder is bored to have a smooth fit the tailstock 'spindle,' and has a tommy bar for assistance in cranking the die.  With a little 'TapMagic' the threading is done with little difficulty.

I machined some nuts from 3/8" - 360 brass rod so that they can fit into the faceplate slots.  They are simply tapped M5x0.8.

Some nice ribbons of brass....

Finished



A slightly different style of clamp is described below.  They fit the same M5 socket head screws, but made from flat bar rather round rod.  A piece of 1/4" x 1/2" brass bar was milled flat on the ends and positions for socket head screws and M3 set screws laid out to make a pair of clamps.  The holes were drilled, or counterbored or tapped as required. 

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The underside of the clamping ends were milled to a depth of 0.4mm, and the corners and top faces were milled to angle of 25°.

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The clamps were parted on the power hack saw (sorry for the blurry shot), and the corners on the sawed ends then relieved 45° by milling.

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The surfaces of the clamps were finished with a hand file and emery paper.  The hardware includes two M3 x 8mm set screw and two M5 socket head screws (20mm length would do, but these are 25mm), matching hex nuts, and washers made previously from 1/2"  brass rod.

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