My English wheel (sheetmetal wheeling machine)

[MichaelMoore]

The long build description is here on my website:

Euro Spares - Tools - Sheet Metal Tools

At the beginning are a few photos/description of a pair of wheeling machines a friend and I made decades ago. After that is a lot of description and photos of my "I don't ever want to feel like I need to build another one after this so I need to do everything I can think of and try to do it right" machine from about 10 years ago.

The machine is just under 7 feet tall and the chassis is made from 8" Schedule 40 pipe. I purchased a nice set of Hoosier Pattern anvils because I don't have a CNC lathe for doing accurate radii on large pieces, and that was money well spent. What wasn't so well spent was the time making the quill spring loaded. There is a lot of discussion on metalshaping forums on how stiff a wheeling machine should be and while I had some thoughts of my own I figured that I should make it so I could try it in either sprung or rigid mode, and also have some control over the spring rate too. At the end of the page is a summary of some testing I did on the two modes and my conclusions.

The completed machine:



quill components:



adjustable lower anvil holder:



The quill adjuster and dial, with each of the 4 increments being .01" movement on the quill. I can easily interpolate to .001". That is a spring lock-out bar protruding from the front of the machine:



cheers,
Michael