Weight Scales  2                                                4-2025



 

Working With Wood Continued

 

Now that the bushing holes are in, I'm going to cut some 45 degree angles on the side pieces.
 

 

 

I wanted each angle to be exact and to have a nice finish so I used my table saw and my cross-cut sled to skim each edge. This only took a few minutes and worked out great.
 

 

 

Working With Metal

 

I'm going to make the bushings out of some leftover 5/8" diameter round bar that was used on another project,
 

 

 

I made two for each scale. These are 1 3/4" long with a reamed 3/8" diameter hole through them. These will get pressed into the side pieces and then I'll use a pin that will locate through both bushings.
 

 

 

Here I'm cutting some 1/2' thick aluminum plate that will be used for the balancing arm. My bandsaw made quick work of cutting these.
 

 

 

This was also leftover from a previous project and should work nicely for this. The type of aluminum is 6061-T6, which is perfect for this application.
 

 

 

I milled all six sides square, and here I'm cutting the ends to length which will be 12.00" long exactly. The width is 3.0" wide.
 

 

 

I milled a .750" wide slot by .050" deep that will be used to locate a block that will be used as a pivot point. The block will be held in place by those two 10-32 screws.
 

 

 

The block is 3/4" X .800" tall, with a 3/8" diameter hole that goes through. The blue layout dye is going to have a round pocket, and if you look close you can see the layout lines that represents a 1.500 diameter circle. I'll talk more about this later.
 

 

 

Here I'm using a 3/8" radius cutter to produce a full radius on the 3/4" dimension. This radius will serve two things: first it has a nice rounded surface so nobody gets hurt, and second, it just looks nicer.
 

 

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