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Tudor Bodkin

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Inuumarue:
A lot of the same today.  Made some more waxes, the light brown ones.  We ran out of the old wax and started on a new batch of harder wax. The new stuff takes forever to solidify, but when it does its as hard as a rock.  If I time everything right i can pull it out while its still a bit pliable, straighten everything out and then dip in cold water and harden it for good.  This brings the total count of heads to 9, theres one in the mold, plus one near finished dimension wax.  So, three more makes an even dozen. I was hoping to make two, but I'll take what I can get.

Ian.:
Looking very good, how thick are the socket walls?

Inuumarue:
About 1/16th of an inch.  From everything I've gathered its the thinnest I can go and still get fairly reliable results in metal.  They end up a few hairs thinner when the metal shrinks and then a few more after finishing.  I'll be the first to admit that I might be overcompensating thicknesses and bulk, but for a small run I want to make sure they all turn out.  Just means i have a few hours of finishing ahead of me.

Adam

CraigMBeckett:
Inuumarue,

Do you have any tools that will allow you to drill/grind out the socket walls? As Ian suggests they still look a bit too thick. If you cannot thin them, then no matter you can still fit them flush to the shaft outside diameter by making a thicker step down from the outside of the shaft to the beginning of the taper. One of the best tools to achieve this step is a small pipe cutter, take it slow as too much of a cut may cause crushing of the shaft. Please note the pipe cutter is used only to mark the position and cut the depth of the step all wood removal will need to be done using other means, knife, file, rasp, grinder etc.

Best of luck with the venture.

Craig.

Inuumarue:
Craig,
I have a few tools that may do the job in brass.  If I want the socket thinner I'm going to have to do it post cast rather than before.  The wax itself has a bit of trouble at the ends of the sockets, I'd hate to have similar problems in metal by going to thin.  The pipe cutter trick just blows me away, I have plenty of them laying around, it never crossed my mind to use them for arrows.  As it stands now, I get the feeling that I'll have more than enough grinding to do to true things up and get down to weight.  A little more to thin out the socket may not even be noticed.

To all,
Sorry for my absence, classes and the general repetition have kept me from updating.  Not much has changed from the last time I posted, though i now have a full 2 dozen heads with a few extras in case something goes wrong.  The only new development has been adding the heads to a tree.  The trees are shared between multiple people, my castings will take up the bottom half of two of the four sides of the tree, when others are finished and add their waxes to the tree, the tree can have the ceramic coating put on and then we can make some more progress to casting.  I'll make sure to get you guys detailed descriptions on that part.  But here we are today.


Should have everything attached and all the little runners put on by tonight.  Also, the full story is on the link I posted earlier if you all would like to follow along there as well.

Adam

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