Thread: Web site for Camel Back Drills

Hi Stuart, Joe,

Eagle eyed Stuart as always... I'm trying to see what that cam does? Is it a cam operated automatic downfeed mechanism?

Regards
Ray

Yes Ray, that's what it is. The cam operated the feed lever which moves a pawl in the ratchet of the downfeed wheel at the top. The feed is adjustable in the sense that you can adjust how far the feed lever moves each revolution of the hand crank in steps of ratchet teeth.

Joe

Originally Posted by jhovel

Yes Ray, that's what it is. The cam operated the feed lever which moves a pawl in the ratchet of the downfeed wheel at the top. The feed is adjustable in the sense that you can adjust how far the feed lever moves each revolution of the hand crank in steps of ratchet teeth.

Joe

I will give you a full demo on Sunday gentlemen. All will be revealed.

Phil

I found the bottom bracket - it's a loose fit and just fell off when I pulled the drill out of it's hiding hole.
I soaked it in Inox the other day and cleaned it a little today and found that everything moves again the way it should.
When I get a chance (and all Christmas presents are finished being made), I'll give it a proper scrub and rub and lick of paint and mount it on a post in my shed.
I think I might russle up a chuck with a 1/2" shank to mount on it for ordinary "modern" drill bits.

Joe

It will be interesting to hear how often you use the drill Joe. They were tough men back when that's all they had. Big arms. To countersink you might need to manually turn the down feed handwheel with one hand while turning the crank with the other. Then you'll need to have your wife hold whatever it is you are countersinking. You'll give up and head over to the Servian.

They are neat things to look upon. Here's the two in one gear Stu mentioned, on my Buffalo.

Someone told me that the open U shaped foot under the table was for supporting hoops or rims while drilling. On the Buffalo the round table swivels out of the way to expose the foot.

BT

Hi Bob,
on mine the rectangular table can swing out of the way as well - and has a U-shaped thingy under it that stays in place. I had wondered what it was for.
I think the Dawn No.611 is a very close copy of the Buffalo Forge No.611 with a few minor casting shape changes....

Joe

Originally Posted by eskimo

Ray
Here some pics of the one that my Grand Father was making back in the early days

Also is a poor quality photo of the adverting leaflet they had

didnt know the pic was so bad when I took it..my uncle took over the manufacturing from my grand dad.... hence the stamp imprint lower right corner

Looks to be based on the same principle as the COLE DRILL that was made in the US. These are often listed on www.ebay.com

I managed to restore the Dawn Post drill in between other jobs, mount it and try it out tonight.
Steve (SIL) donated a beautiful piece of blackbutt plank to mount it on - for bolting to a steel column in my workshop frame.

I'm actually really amazed by it.

I managed to 'improve' the feed mechanism to actually feed between one and three ratchet teeth instead of just one.
That required shaping and fitting a strip of metal to the feed cam follower, which previously had about 1/2" clearance to the cam. I happened to have a strip of phosphor bronze about 8mm thick to use and filed and polished with emery cloth the 'as cast' cam surface.... works nicely now.
I also had a very old but good 10mm keyless Metabo chuck on a buggered 45 year old drill (it only gave up its ghost last year!).
I cut up and turned the chuck spindle out of the drill to 1/2" diameter and filed a couple of flats on it to fit into the original Dawn straight shank chuck.
The table is now filed and linished flat instead of the wonky as cast finish Dawn chose to sell it with. I started scraping it but that looked really wrong....

In testing, I started with a 3/8" bit in mild steel - easy-peasy. Increased the feed to two teeth on the ratchet - no trouble at all. Then to max - three teeth - and in it went. Bit more muscle required, but well within my stamina range. It peeled out some pretty big swarf!
Next came the biggest 10mm shank drill I have: 5/8". This took a good amount of muscle, but back on 1 tooth per rev feed, I could keep that up for 15 minutes or longer without sweating, I think.
Two feed teeth per rev required me to brace my stance a bit and three teeth feed was getting to the limit of my strength to keep the momentum of the flywheel going. If I relaxed a bit, it would just stop dead as soon as the cam moved the feed wheel. But again, that produced huge swarf and seemed to flex the table column as well - so too big a feed anyway.
Countersinking works perfectly well too - at 1 tooth feed, its quite controllable and gives a good finish.

The McPherson catalog listed the drill's capacity as 1-1/4". A young blacksmith would have had no trouble drilling that size - 40 years ago I could too. But now I'm a 60 year old psych nurse and have bugger all muscle mass left.....

Sorry about the crappy phone pictures and the dirty fingerprints I forgot to wipe off...

Cheers,
Joe

Nice job Joe
Personally I think every shop should have one. Mind you, you just put mine to shame.

Phil

Thanks Phil.
Just wait until I out my fithy paws all over it and then let it collect a bit of dust - it'll be fine then
I just got inspired a bit by Anorak Bob's photos and polished a bit here and there
I like it.

Cheers,
Joe

Originally Posted by jhovel

I just got inspired a bit by Anorak Bob's photos and polished a bit here and there

Hi Joe,

Great job, and such an amazing piece of engineering history restored to beautiful condition.

Anorak Bob's got a lot to answer for, here I am working late into the night, polishing the heads of nuts and bolts, and delicately touching up paint work... and BT's restoration work still puts me to shame... but I think you've got him on the run with this drill..

Regards
Ray

Nahh Ray, they are just poor photos that make it look better than it is. But thank you!
I'm still in awe of Bob's restorations.
It's the nicest resto I've done though. A lot of elbow grease I found.
I didn't want to 'gild the lily' and mess with the cast finish (which is bloody rough).
I rather suspect that Dawn gear was the equivalent of low-end Chinese today: built to a price. Casting big castings must have been cheap - and as a result they outlasted the company. I suspect that's just lucky for us. This drill weighs in at about 45kgs and has had an absolute minimum of machining - even the mating faces of the gear bosses are rough, where they rub against the frame.... the gears are as cast and as I mentioned, the table surface was as cast. The only machining is drilling and machining the thrust bearing cup and the feed screw and nut. A bit of grinding here and there - like on the outside of the flywheel - that's it. I was tempted to improve the finish of the surfaces likely to wear, but restrained myself to the feed cam and follower only - and the table, because it wasn't even neally flat.

Joe

Looks great Joe. Good for another 50 years now.

Stuart