Making an engineers sliding bevel. Apprentice piece?

I'd like to make a small sliding bevel.maybe with only a 2" or 3" long blade.

~ plenty of carpenters bevels for sale, engineers version seem a bit thin on the ground & a little larger than i'd really like.

I suspect making one was an apprentice ritual at one time of day.

Well i never was an apprentice & actually was appallingly bad at metal work in my school years.

Was thinking of ground flat stock for material~hopefully build to last.

Or is this going to be too hard?

I can't see making the blade presenting too many problems, drill & file slot or drill & mill slot.

The body has me pondering how to execute the slot well.

Would be a little narrow for hacksaw & needle file i think.

I can use slitting saw, but how to get end of slot finished to match angle on end of blade.

Maybe you were an apprentice & made one?~ presumably by predominantly using hand tools.

Any suggestions gratefully received~ how would you approach this?

When I made one, rather a lot of years ago, the body was from three pieces two sides and a spacer from the same material as the blade all riveted together then filed. Couldn't see the join!

John

Edited By Journeyman on 07/12/2016 16:51:39

Make the body by sandwiching some of the blade material between two thicker pieces and rivet together.

Martin

Beaten by 20 seconds! 

Edited By Martin Connelly on 07/12/2016 16:51:29

3 piece sounds a much simpler method of acheiving desired goal.

though I do like the elegance of a single piece of metal.....

Plus i still have bad memories of riveting in metalwork....

It must have been the most riveted adjustable spanner in the history of our school.

The Metalwork teacher ( Mr Hall, but not the famous one) finally lost patience & tore me off a strip,he thought i was deliberately doing it wrong.

In my defence i'm a southpaw.

Maybe 30yrs on it's finally time to face my nemesis?

Just remember, pop rivets are not a cop-out, they are a sensible solution.

Regards

Richard

I still have the tri-square I made at school you would think the stock was a single piece of metal not 3 bits of 1.5x20 bar and some rivits. I did make a sliding bevel too but don't know what happened to that.

Ok, thanks for the replies.

I'll give the riveting a go.

If you are a southpaw then you need left handed hacksaws, files and a lefthanded 'ammer.

If you have a mill you could use a slitting saw. You would have to hold the body in the vice at the correct angle to get the angled end on the slot. But the three-piece construction will more likely give you a better surface finish inside the slot, which will give a smoother movement to the blade.

One of my old books "Metal Work for Technical &High School Students with useful tables and data" By A. L. Hughes. 1945/47/51. mine is an Australian edition. It has a drawing for a sliding bevel, and it uses a bit of 3/4" x 1/16" spring steel for the blade, and the body is made from 3/4" x 1/8" mild steel. The rivets are made from lengths of 1\8" MS rod, the locking screw is a counter sunk !/4" Whitworth screw.

Ian S C

Sliding Bevel Plan here

.

Nice Plan

I hadn't seen that site before.

Unless riveting is a 'target' skill, however; I would be tempted to modify the body slightly, and use countersunk screws .

MichaelG.

Funny thing though. Riveting is certainly not my forté and I've shied away from it for years, finding alternative methods. I recently built the Acute Grinding System and it calls for one (turned) part to be riveted to a plate. So I decided to try again for a change and it worked out very well. Took just a couple of minutes and cleaned up invisibly. I was really pleased.

It might have helped that I used 12L14 for the turned part (leaded steel .... what you guys call EN-something).

Edited By Bandersnatch on 09/12/2016 18:32:38

As a left handed ex teacher of Design and Technology I used to get very cross with students who used their left-handedness as an excuse for incompetence. All it needs is practice and then more practice.

Ah but competent left handed folks still look strange doing things in a left handed way.

I have practiced left handedness till I'm a fairly proficient ambdextrous handed person.

Hi, the plan in Bandersnatch's link is very much like the one I made in metalwork at school. Couple of slight differences are the blade was rounded at the end, same as the body, instead of being square, and the distance piece we had to hacksaw from the 45 degree end of the blade. So when the blade was folded inline with the body when not in use, the two 45's were in the same plain, so there was no significant gap between the blade and the distance piece.

Oh! and we had to hacksaw the slot in the blade after drilling holes at each end. Don't know if I've still got the one I made, as I haven't seen it for a while.

Regards Nick.