Spent a few hours doing a job that I was really reluctant to do for a long time and that is to machine the rudder arm to size. The arms came as rough castings with only the holes in the arms drilled and steel bushings pressed in. A big help in the lathe setup was Bill Johnson's photos in Russ Erb’s CD. In preparation, I bought a live center for the tailstock, but I had no center for the chuck end. All the dead centers I had were tapered for the tailstock. On ebay I found just the movable end of an Atlas lathe tailstock at a reasonable price. I was able to put that in the chuck and then put a drive arm over that and insert one of the dead centers I had. It didn’t matter if it was dead because the center turns with the piece anyway. Also, it was a chore to find the center axis of the rough casting and drill countersinks at each end to accept the centers. Lots of noodling later I got a centerline established and then ground the cutter profile to do the cutting and get the proper radius at the arm end of the shaft. Going slow, I finally made one and it was just right with a snug fit inside a T14 tube. Since I had it all set up, I went ahead and made a second arm. It really didn’t go any faster, but it was set up and that saved some time. I made a second to have one for the float install. There is an extended bar that gets bolted to the rudder arm that drives the water rudder cables. It will be nice to just exchange the rudder arms when going from wheels to floats instead of messing with the arm as well.
