Tools by Elmer Verburg

[mklotz]

Most of us are familiar with the plans for Elmer's engines at the John-Tom site...

Elmers Engines Steam Engine Plans

When you go there don't overlook the plans in the Appendix...

http://www.john-tom.com/ElmersEngine...omRevNov07.pdf

Among them you'll find Elmer's beam compass.

It has a conventional pivot fitted with a fine adjustment just like the expensive ones. What makes it special is Elmer's take on the pencil holder. This is a miniature V-block with an integral clamp. As such it will accept, naturally, pencils and pens. But, in addition, it will accept center punches (for laying out holes for chain drilling, etc.) and X-Acto knives for cutting out gaskets. The plans cover a connector and another bar to extend the range of the compass. I made these too but forgot to include them in the picture. With them the compass can scribe a 24" radius.

Something else in the Appendix plans are Elmer's designs for various small instrument vises. Of similar overall design, they have differing jaw shapes to accommodate different tasks. I made this one...

and fitted it with horizontal and vertical V-grooves and an arm with a stop for cutting pieces of small rod to equal sizes. Grasping it in the bench vise brings the work up close to aging eyes which makes intricate filing tasks a lot easier.

[kbalch]

Thanks Marv! I've added your Beam Compass and Instrument Vise to, respectively, our Rulers, Protractors, and Compasses and Vises categories, as well as to your builder page: mklotz's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Beam Compass by mklotz

tags: compass

Instrument Vise by mklotz

tags: vise

[ncollar]

Marv
Very nice and yes many tools that he made to make his live better.
Nelson

[WmRMeyers]

Most of us are familiar with the plans for Elmer's engines at the John-Tom site...

Elmers Engines Steam Engine Plans

When you go there don't overlook the plans in the Appendix...

http://www.john-tom.com/ElmersEngine...omRevNov07.pdf

Among them you'll find Elmer's beam compass.

It has a conventional pivot fitted with a fine adjustment just like the expensive ones. What makes it special is Elmer's take on the pencil holder. This is a miniature V-block with an integral clamp. As such it will accept, naturally, pencils and pens. But, in addition, it will accept center punches (for laying out holes for chain drilling, etc.) and X-Acto knives for cutting out gaskets. The plans cover a connector and another bar to extend the range of the compass. I made these too but forgot to include them in the picture. With them the compass can scribe a 24" radius.

Something else in the Appendix plans are Elmer's designs for various small instrument vises. Of similar overall design, they have differing jaw shapes to accommodate different tasks. I made this one...

and fitted it with horizontal and vertical V-grooves and an arm with a stop for cutting pieces of small rod to equal sizes. Grasping it in the bench vise brings the work up close to aging eyes which makes intricate filing tasks a lot easier.

I was disturbed to find that the links you provided are no longer good. You can still access them through the WayBack Machine at Archive.org, but there is no telling how long that will be true. The top domain name is parked at GoDaddy.com. I hope someone has all the documents that were saved there saved locally. I have a few of the engines, but didn't know about the tools until today. Downloaded the tools extract, myself, but not all the engines.

Bill

[mklotz]

I was disturbed to find that the links you provided are no longer good. You can still access them through the WayBack Machine at Archive.org, but there is no telling how long that will be true. The top domain name is parked at GoDaddy.com. I hope someone has all the documents that were saved there saved locally. I have a few of the engines, but didn't know about the tools until today. Downloaded the tools extract, myself, but not all the engines.

Bill

I'm sorry to hear that.

You can still download Elmer's book, "Elmer's Engines", as a .pdf here...

http://www.myheap.com/images/stories...merVerburg.pdf

It contains plans for all the engines as well as the Appendix where the plans for the tools are located. I suggest you get a copy before this too disappears from the interweb.

[WmRMeyers]

I'm sorry to hear that.

You can still download Elmer's book, "Elmer's Engines", as a .pdf here...

http://www.myheap.com/images/stories...merVerburg.pdf

It contains plans for all the engines as well as the Appendix where the plans for the tools are located. I suggest you get a copy before this too disappears from the interweb.

Thank you, Marv, and I've done so. I was able to get the extract of his tools that was on the Wayback Machine, as well. I hate it that these sites disappear. I hated it when Yahoo Groups went down, too. I was able to salvage the groups that I owned, and move them to Groups.io, and managed to persuade a few others that it would be a good idea, but too many folks weren't interested in saving them, and thousands of groups disappeared. I belonged to over one hundred groups there, mostly but not exclusively metalworking-related. I've only been able to find about 54 groups that I'm interested in on GIO. I was active on several mini-lathe forums, for example, run by J.W. Early, who passed away unexpectedly, and all of his groups vanished. I was able to save a tiny portion of a few of them, but couldn't keep them active since he was the only owner & moderator. The groups I own, now, I'm not the only owner. I would like to believe I'm immortal and invincible, but the health problems I'm having now would disabuse me of that notion if I still held it. I do own a mini-lathe group, and the Metal Shapers group, both of which were Scott Logan's, back on Yahoo. He didn't have time to maintain them, and I was down for my first major health problem cluster so he gave them to me. Kept me as sane as I've ever been, for the several years that those problems had me down. Ralph Patterson gave me permission to put his drawings on my mini-lathes site a while back, after the toolsandmods site vanished, so those weren't lost, and Harprit Sandhu's Shaper vise and Indexer drawings are on my Metal-Shapers group with his permission. Thankfully, I'm not the only one who cares. There are several other great sites there that others have saved, or recreated, or new groups started at Groups.io, which has over 37,000 groups now.

Bill