Repair of a push mower roller bracket using my metal shaper

This was sort of a fun project for me.  I had this push mower that I had inadvertently busted the roller bracket on when I backed it up hard on my driveway

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I had some stock with pre drilled holes in stock which I need to plan down in thickness but my width was perfect. I had a couple of false starts which you see in the picture as I was trying to get the tool group properly. Originally I had this my mill and it wasn’t fun.  The material was hardened and I don’t have a power feed on my mill. Hand cranking was very tedius. The autofeed on the shaper was much nicer.
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I’m actually doing a straight downward plunge in this picture.  What I did was take a rough cut.  Measure the width and than adjust the horizontal with the indicator.. It seemed to work pretty good.

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In needed to replicate the boss than was in the original part  So, I scribed the center lines and hit it with a optical center punch.  In the picture I’m getting the punch mark zero’d out in my four jaw chuck.

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You can see the machined boss in this picture. Here I’m center drilling it, in preparation for drilling and tapping

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Here you can I’m tapping the part, using a tap holder I made in a shop class many many years ago.
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I wound up using a shoulder bolt of the correct diameter, got some loc-tite and screwed it in. I than cut the head off and rounded what needed to be ground. Hopefully the loc-tite will hold, since I just realized looking at the picture that the stud could in theory unwind. As you can tell from the leaves on the mower its fall and I won’t be mowing the lawn till spring. 😉 Hmm…. The blades are sort of dull, I wonder if I could rig something up to sharpen them.

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