Sometimes you have to improvise...

What do you do when the company that made a machine (and it's parts) that you're working on went out of business many many years ago - and, you're missing said parts?

The answer is, you improvise son.



While finishing up a recent Kelsey restore, I hit a little problem in that the one item missing from this otherwise complete press, were the tympan fingers - a part that seems to go missing from old presses fairly often. I think people take these off when they're not using them and they get separated from the press permanently...orphaned in a shop somewhere, only to be found years later by someone who says 'what the heck are these?'

But, in the interest of supplying a complete press to buyers, I need these.

The problem is that you can't really find 16 gauge mild steel cut in to half inch strips anywhere. When you try and have them cut on a shear, the shear twists and contorts them, and that's if the shear can cut that small...some can't at all.
Which leaves one with a handful of twisty-bread-style steel strips to try and craft something out of. So you head in to the shop and with a hammer and anvil, you try and reform these scraps into fingers. A person's sword/knife making skills come in to play here.

Once the pieces are bashed back in to place and shaped and formed to the spec of original tympan fingers, shaft collars are welded in to place, the whole mess is media blasted, then wire wheel shined. Overall, they work well and very closely approximate the originals.

Even though the machine that made the originals probably went to scrap 25 years ago, we have to find some way to keep making them.