August 22, 2008
We had our first attempt at making a screwdriver last week. Both girls made one. Somehow I was deprived of the privilege of making one in high school, even though it seems to be a common project. We must have been making other things (I remember a perspex container for paperclips, a plumb bob turned on the lathe, a drawing table and chair - I still have the table, maybe dad still has the plumb bob).
We started with the handle. J made hers out of a piece of firewood that we picked up around the corner. It was a small branch, but too thick, so we hacked it down to size with the hatchet, then she sanded it while holding it in the vise. I drilled a pilot hole in it to receive the tang of the screwdriver (2mm). A made hers from an old crib bar, which she cut herself with a coping saw while holding the piece in the vise.
The blade we made from an old coil spring, straightened out in the forge, then drawn down for the tang, and likewise for the blade. The whole thing had to be drawn down because it was too thick. We didn't take the hardening very seriously - this is our first try, a prototype. We heated it up and the girls both wanted to quench their own. Then we heated the tang and I pushed it into the handle which was in the vise. A little wax as it cooled to keep the rust away, then I ground the ends of the blades on the bench grinder.
Both the vise and bench grinder were gifts from Ralph O. when he moved to Florida. The forge came from freecycle, and the anvil is just a bit of railway iron on a stump of black locust (that we cut down from our backyard).
We're quite pleased with the result. Now the boys want a "turn" at making theirs.
A's screwdriver:
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1 comment:
My brother reminded me that I did make a kind of screwdriver in school. It was a paint stirrer made of wire with a diamond shape at the end. I think it was designed to spin between the hands to mix the paint. The other end (my memory is foggy here) was flattened out, probably as a paint can opener, not a screwdriver.
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