The Gearbox takes shape...

Steady progress has been made constructing the gearbox that will hold all the wooden gears and bearings. Despite having measured drawings and cutting carefully, I made a few minor mistakes getting the dimensions just right. No amount of detail and careful execution helps when cutting wood is involved. It swells and warps depending on humidity, and if you pencil lines are just a smidge one side or the other, these can all add up to a couple millimeters of error.

The first attempt at fitting parts together had a few issues. Some of the cross braces were a few millimeters out and made any attempt to fit this complex box together quite difficult. Word of advice, when making wooded parts for something like this, a mm or two of give may be a good idea. Also triple check your drawings. Some precise alignments might make sense if this were metal, but you need give when working with wood.
Though as you can see here after a bit of filing and nibbling with my saw it fit together nice and tight.
There is no glue used here, but it holds together just fine. I'm using straight grained fir and various thicknesses of Baltic birch ply. I eventually plan to stain darker and polish with various waxes to give it an 'antique' look...


Next: finish a couple more gear support parts, then on to installation of the bearings and gears (taking into account the slight measurement changes), and designing a new driver gear.