Random things for Random people- Pop goes the Weasel

Lever type shock absorbers from new castings. “Well, “I hear you ask, “what’s so random about that?”  Well, they are for a tank.A Panzer 1 to be exact.  A lot of people don’t realise tanks have shock absorbers.

The main reason why people had been throwing stupid figures at making these shock absorbers, were the shafts that connect to the lever part of the shockabsorber. You see, Fritz was a bit of an odd bloke. Whilst sat at his drawing board, dreaming of running his fingers through Bruinhilda’s Sauerkraut once again ,he came up with this masterful design...not. “ We, Ze Cherman’s , shall have tapered shafts on our shockabsorbers, But wait, that’s not all*. We shall have tapered shafts with SPLINES. That will make ze Machinist’s Auspuft pucker....”. And so it came to past, ( thanks Fritzy Boi ), that the shockabsorbers on Panzer 1 tanks have tapered and splined shafts. Which, when most Machinists see the drawing, makes their Chocolate Starfish pucker....Not mine,I might add 🤣🤣









* Fritz survived the war and found gainful employment, after the war,on the then, very new shopping channel...

Well, I don’t know how most people cut tapered splines, but my way worked, so I must be a genius...or extremely lucky 🤣🤣
After many a sleepless night,I came up with a way to do it. Precious little, like diddly squat, information on the internet about it, so at least nobody to tell me I was doing it wrong. No fancy cutters, just some crap I cobbled together. In the end it was the biggest non event of the year. Less than a day to do both internal,and external splines. 45 teeth with the shaft being 26mm at one end and 27mm at the other end. Happy days 😊

aaaaand the perfect thread title award goes to...... 🤣🤣🤣

Why thank you Sir 😊

So, it was off to see a friend I never knew.  Tom owns a company that does rubber moulding. Top class bloke,bit of a petrol head which also helps. He has a beautiful Westfield he built,and his late fathers Porsche 356 kitcar,that was being built to an extremely high standard. I don’t think he is quite ready to finish it,which,considering it was his Dad that started it,but unfortunately didn’t finish it,is totally understandable.  It’s in a safe ,dry place until he is ready 😊

Anyway, after a few discussions with Tom about these Rubbers, shrinkage rates etc, I went back and made the tooling and the inner and outer steel shells. These then went off for plating before being coated with a special heat activated bonding coat. They were then placed into the tool in a heated press and rubber was injected between the two shells.


Very happy with the results. Couldn’t resist signing them. Wonder if somebody will ever see them again? They are torsion bar rubbers inside the hull of a 46t Panther tank. Tom was very impressed with the tool I made,and we have subsequently done quite a few projects together, as well as become good friends 😊


It recently went home to Australia following a five year restoration. These were one of the first parts I did for this project.

Wait and see 😉

So how do you make rubber bellows? No idea, but that didn’t stop me🤣
I figured you need three pieces of metal, one being round and long for an inner core. Two flat rectangular pieces for the outside. You whittle away all the material on the round bar that doesn’t look bellowsy . You then dig out all the bits that don’t look bellowsy in the two blocks. Job done 👍🏻

I won’t show you the core, as I would be opening myself up for a whole lot of pain. Johnny Bravo. Snigger snigger snigger. The buttplug maker.

The cavities were good fun to machine.

Hadn’t done any 3D milling for awhile

Got there in the end.

Parts came out perfect

Very happy customer. After all this Covid malarkey is over, I must take them up on their offer of driving a couple of their steam locomotives 😊

Pretty much word of mouth. I have a pretty diverse customer base. People talk. I have a bit of a reputation for the guy to go to when nobody else will help you 😊