An Introduction: Chris Collins and Morris Tilly Project

[Chris Collins]

Originally Posted by jack neville

I stumbled upon the second and only other set we have which one of us misplaced. Since I am typing this I blame Mr Collins.

Bounder, cad...

They were placed in a fairly visible place ands we'd no doubt wandered past the dozens of time and we'd not noticed. No matter, they're found now and on their way to being resurrected

[jack neville]

I have digressed a bit to do some work on the Tilly seats. We only have one set of original seats which are virtually the same. The construction is simple formed mainly by flats and angle and straight sheetmetal. The base has a pressed cross in the centre which is the only complicated piece. There is a simple lock to allow movement of the seat.

[jack neville]

My youngest son Nick is an engineer so I convinced him to give me a hand to make a die to press the cross into the seat base. Once I had measured it all up and worked out an idea I got him to draw some CAD plans to get some steel laser cut.

[jack neville]

A heavy steel base was cut which had a 5mm template plug welded to it.
The small pieces to fabricate the movement mechanism was also lazer cut. I got a few extras done just in case.

[jack neville]

Three 10mm template pieces were tacked together and positioned over the 5 mm piece and then clamped together. I welded small positioning tabs around the outside to locate the top template. I added loops for lifting as It was getting pretty heavy. Heavy angle iron was drilled and positioned over the templates to clamp the die together. I then drilled and tapped into the heavy plate for the bolts to secure the angle iron. My gantry allows me to move anything anywhere easily which came in handy for drilling the heavy plate.

[jack neville]

So that was the female part complete. The male part I used 25mm steel bar. The ends were rounded of in the lathe and a cross piece welded in situ in the female template. Some 10mm flat bar added to reinforce the round bar and then it was ready for a test on a piece of scrap.

[jack neville]

I have to say I was very satisfied with the result. The pressing was very uniform and the lines on the underside very defined and exact.