How I made a giant nut for the giant screw.

[george wilson]

The tricky part of the whole job was in threading the hole. Also,not having the nut shrink up and bind the screw. You'd NEVER get the giant screw out of the hole if it became stuck.

I needed a log that was gnarly looking,like the original in the photographs,which I do not have to show you. I also needed a log that was much drier than the green wooded screw. In a country sawmill,I found my log. It was about 40" in diameter,and old and gray. The bark had all fallen off,it was so old. Sure enough,later on I discovered it had barbed wire in it,which is why the lumber mill had never sawn it up!!

It was sold to me as oak,but without the bark it was hard to identify. It turned out to be half dry hickory,and as tough as nails to cut.

You can see me slabbing one side of the log down with a chainsaw,which was very hard on my back,as I've had severe back trouble since I hurt it at age 21. The log was just too large to get into a saw mill that had been found to cut the other 2 sides. The front side was left un cut,looking very crude and gnarly,much like the original press in the pictures.

After I had slabbed the log's side,we took it to a sawmill where the other 2 sides were squared up with a very large circular saw blade with inserted teeth. Most sawmills use bandsaws these days.

After the nut was complete,I went over the 3 surfaces with an adze and got rid of the saw cuts on the surfaces.

We took off the cross slide on the old lathe,and got the log up onto the lathe with a forklift. The log must have weighed a ton,even trimmed down.

We chained the log down tightly. You can see a 4" drill making the initial cut. Then,the hole was bored out to 8" diameter. It was JUST possible to pass a router at a 45º angle through that hole(while making the first threading cut 1" deep). I got lucky on that one!

A jig was welded up to hold the router at the angle,and it had a slide with set screws so that we could make successively deeper cuts. What about the cord? The router's jig was welded onto the end of a 4" pipe about 2 feet or more in length. I had the router on an extension cord,and just let it wrap around the pipe,keeping it clear of the 4 jaw chuck. The lathe was going about 6 RPM the whole time,so it wasn't dangerous keeping the line free if the chuck.

After these 2 things were done,I hauled them back to Williamsburg. The housewrights and I made the big frame and assembled the cider press.

The cider press can be seen in the FAQ section. It is about 8 feet wide and 10 feet tall.

I also had to make an apple grinder to go with it,but that is another subject to be added another time.

[Leigh Betsch]

So you clamped the block to the crosslide and mounted the router in the 4 jaw?

[Mike Henderson]

Wow, George. That's just amazing. I can't imagine doing something that large.

Mike

[george wilson]

Leigh,that is correct. The 4"pipe was clamped in the 4 jaw.

Mike,they had specialists in the 18th.C. for making screws,especially large ones. It would take a team of men,and horses to handle the weight of these screws and nuts. They probably threaded the holes with a special jig,like you may have seen on the Woodwright's Show,only much larger,with 1 or more thread shaped blades to scrape out the threads.

[Leigh Betsch]

Clamping a router to a compound to cut external threads is not so far out but, clamping a router in a 4 jaw?? I don't think I could have thought of that one! I guess it is kind of an extension of the line boring in a lathe thought process (I've never done that either).
The odder the better!

[george wilson]

The process is described in the text,Leigh. The 4" pipe was held in the chuck. Re read it.

[Leigh Betsch]

Yeah, I can figure it out when I read how you did it but I was trying to comment that I'd have never figured how to make this without reading about it first. When I worked in a job shop we'd get some odd stuff to do but nothing like this.

[Scott T Smith]

George, fascinating! One question that I have is if the router was mounted to the chuck, and the cross slide removed, how did you control the feed rate for making the threads?

[Todd Burch]

I read this post first, and didn't get it. Then I read the NUT post, and coming back here, I now understand how you cut the internal threads. That must have been an awesome sight to have a router coming at you (looking through the hole from behind), screaming, with a cutter spinning 10K+ RPM, and the router all wobbly / screwy turning around! I would have loved to have seen this. I would have happily swept the shavings to be around this type of project.

Todd

[Todd Burch]

I went looking for the press on the Williamsburg site. Didn't find it yet, but did find this:

http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Holiday06/tools.cfm

Todd

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

That is some damn fine problem solving, there George.

[george wilson]

Scott,the text does explain how the router was adjusted. It was mounted on a 45º slideway on the end of the 4" pipe. No adjustment of the chuck was necessary.

Glad all of you are enjoying this.

[Chris Griggs]

Speechless.

[Brian Kent]

You may have already answered this, but does this screw and nut work with just wood against wood, or is it greased?

[george wilson]

I did take a large torch,a barn brush and a big pan of beeswax and thoroughly paint the screw while it was still in the lathe,heating the wood some to get the wax to sink in,so it wouldn't just wipe off.

My other motive was to get the screw to dry from the inside,via the 2" hole bored through its center.

[Scott T Smith]

Scott,the text does explain how the router was adjusted. It was mounted on a 45º slideway on the end of the 4" pipe. No adjustment of the chuck was necessary.

Glad all of you are enjoying this.


George, thanks for the response. I can understand how the depth of the thread would be adjusted with the 45 degree slideway, what I'm not able to figure out is how you controlled the threads per inch.

You mentioned removing the cross slide; does this mean that the nut mounted directly to the lathe saddle / carriage, and thus the rate of threading controlled by the standard carriage controls?

[george wilson]

Yes,Scott. The carriage still moved via the lead screw. The router just needed a way to be advanced into the wood. That was done by a simple,crude 45 degree slide that the router was mounted to.

[Niels Cosman]

That's nuts. George, you made my day. You're the man!

[george wilson]

I'm glad all of you are enjoying the posts. Next,I have some detailed pictures of the apple mill,but I might wait a bit before posting that. I have several pictures of making the treadle lathe that is in the FAQ section. Those will be posted in the future.

[Andrae Covington]

Even though many of the other items you've posted are more beautiful and intricate, the giant screw and nut have always been high on my list of favorites. I just love the absurdity of scale.:D

[george wilson]

As you might know,I prefer to work in smaller size things,but can work large if I must. Such was the job even before I was toolmaker.

Something that I had to get used to when I became toolmaker,was the jumping back and forth from precision things like the Brinkley Compass,to making shoemaker's benches-about as crude as you can get. The cider press was one of the first "crude" projects I got involved in. At least,the threading of the screw and nut was not crude,but adzing the bed of the press,and the nut was. My old costume shoes still have cuts around their leather soles from the sharp adze. And,in the 18th.C.,adze men worked BAREFOOT,using their TOES as chip breakers!!! I do not think I would EVER become that proficient with an adze. Or that trusting of my skill. Obviously,that sort of level was attained by the poor devils who never did anything else in their lives but adze work.

[Jim Koepke]

Amazing work.

And a bump to get this back near the other thread.

jtk

[Dave Beauchesne]

George:

You said the log used to make the nut was sitting in the yard as it had barbed wire embedded in it. At what point did you find
out that detail, and did it cause you grief?

I am always amazed at stories of different objects found in logs, as well as how your ingenuity gets the job done. There are so many things
that have been ' lost ', but rare indeed are the individuals who are able to skin the cat, so to speak.

Thanks again -

Dave Beauchesne

[george wilson]

I chain sawed through it! The tree was a corner post for a fence when it was young,so it had barbed wire going through in 2 directions,to make it even worse. I didn't count the growth rings,but it must have been a long time ago that the tree was a fence corner.

At least there was not a horse shoe embedded in the tree. Trees that have been near people are always dangerous. You never know what is over grown inside them.

Yet,the area I found the log in was no doubt a very rural area 100 or more years ago. It is quite rural even today.

Let me caution all that any old log you find in a sawmill's yard is there for a reason. If not,it would have been sawn into lumber long before it would ever turn gray,and have the bark fall off. The reason is most usually barbed wire.

[Izzy Camire]

George,
I am very impressed with this and the screw you made. I have a bandsawmill so I know what it is like to handle logs. You overcame some pretty good problems to pull this off. And you did it safely.
Congrats.

[george wilson]

Jon and I hired a guy with a Wood Mizer sawmill to saw up beechwood for us early on. We were in the woods for 2 weeks in February,sawing out 5000 bd. ft. of beechwood to make planes,saw handles,braces,and whatever else we thought we'd need for the new toolmaking program. Then,we stacked it up in the un insulated attic of a large garage in the Historic area to dry. We couldn't buy beechwood anywhere. The attic got quite hot in the Summers. These days,we have a friend who owns a sawmill. Jon is always getting trees for free that people want removed,or wood from hurricanes. He rents the guy's WoodMizer by the hour and saws up walnut,maple,cherry,and whatever comes his way. He has 100 acres of land,well forested. He buys old tractor trailers to store it in. They aren't noticed being among the trees. He has a huge amount of gunstock wood,and other wood by now.

[Moses Weisberg]

That is some incredible work. When I read your post about making the screw, the firs thought that came into my head was "that nut is going to be a pain"