Pewter rings on a Fray brace

[Cody Cantrell]

Does anyone have an idea on how to tighten the rings on a Fray brace wrist? I recently acquired a 110 off the bay and the rings around the wrist are loose or the rosewood has shrank considerably, not sure. Is there a way to compress the or expand the wood? They are pewter. Thanks for any advice.

Cody

[Chuck Nickerson]

Stephen Sheperd (Full Chisel blog) once posted here how to pour new rings. He says cardstock is a sufficient form to hold the molten pewter.
I wasn't brave enough to try that, yet.

Perhaps he'll stop by.

[Jim Belair]

I think on all of the ones I seen the rings have been loose. I'd just be happy the rings are there :)

[Cody Cantrell]

Thanks for the help, I will do a search. Hopefully Stephen will see this.

[Tony Zaffuto]

I have at least a dozen to dozen & half Fray braces w/Spofford chuck. More than a few of the pewter rings are loose, but that does not bother me. Why do I have so many of these? Besides liking them, I have an appropriate size center bit chucked to the right size brace at all times, also a straight screwdriver bit and several sizes of countersinks.

I repaired one handle that had a ring missing. I simply took a piece of new style solder, and experimented on the right length to go around the handle. I then cut the joint with a scarf (overlapping) cut, tapped the solder flat, and placed into the indent on the handle. I used a pencil solder iron to melt the scarf joint together, and just rubbed the solder a bit. If you didn't know it wasn't original, you could never tell it was a replacement.

[Dave Beauchesne]

Thanks for the help, I will do a search. Hopefully Stephen will see this.

Cody: If it helps, here is his blog address and you could search it : http://www.fullchisel.com/blog/

[Ryan Baker]

The wood shrinks. I have some like that too. I've seen claims that you can soak the wood with linseed oil to swell them back a bit, but I haven't tried it. That's on my todo list too (a long way down though). I have at least one with cracked rings too. I have some pewter sitting in the shop waiting for me to get around to trying to pour new rings.

Here is the thread about pouring new rings:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?136102-Spofford-patent-brace