Auto Certes front roller to wood

Not decided on wood source yet but likely beach rolling pins which can be had pretty cheap even by mail order. Appreciate I could have them made but want to do this myself and would be approx £50 opposed to circa £10 + my spare time. Main point for going to wood is to divide front to 4 rollers per original Marquis albeit on a Certes spindle, lighter weight and more flex in the turn suiting my twisty lawn more .

Before getting the wood I would like to get a better idea of the Certes front spindle diameter, this may or may not help selecting the pre drilled rolling pin wood, too large an ID being the worst case.

I need to get the spindle out anyway. So I am looking for advice on approaching that and could be over thinking it..

I don't want to wreck it in case..appreciate seals and bearing could be sacrificial in the process and get replacements from Simply.

Does it just press / lump hammer out from either end or is there a more intelligent approach required?.. Angus if you read this, I've posted one of your previous pics which looks split at one end.

That looks familiar!  Just take the cap off each end, clean up the shaft at one end so that it will slide through the bearing, protect the end and hit it with a copper / lead hammer and drive it back through the bearing. It will then drive out the opposite bearing.

The split in the roller tube was just down to the whole tube being paper thin.

Thanks Wristpin and Henno for the background information - appreciated 

Bearing sized hole in a bit of 2x4, a few clouts and out it came..

Now Ikea rollers look unavailable to me for possibly a few months, none is central warehouse and won't deliver from store. Grrrr, found another potential source which looks nice Beech but I would have to buy  2 meters of the stuff, waiting to hear back on that.

Fair bit of shrapnel in there!

8x25cm Beach rolling pins delivered today. The wood is really nice, German branded.

Getting the end pegs off was easy and slide hammer made short work of getting the plastic retainers out, I see a coat peg hanger project looming with the spares.. Chop sawed 2 pins in half which takes 6mm out of my 500mm, but hoping to make up the full 510mm+ with M20  x 3mm thick SS washer spacers (on order...)

Disappointed that the original pin spindle hole is all over the place, odd that at both ends they start central ten meander in the centre! As enlarging from 13mm to 20mm should be able to get the hole pulled straight through the 125mm sections -  hope..

Mini lathe was a bit of messing around for various reasons, but got a good 20mm pilot and transferred to pillar drill which is very solid and x/y vice makes it pretty accurate. With only a HSS20mm bit and 125mm of travel it got very hot and squealed a lot, the racket was impressive, had to put on ear defenders.. Advice on the web was to use soap bar on the drill flutes, worked well reducing noise and better cutting, although HSS is not ideal for this.

1 down - 3 to go, then linesh edges, oil and reassemble / test.

Pleased with the end result and learned a few things about boring out deep into hard wood...works well, looks nice.

VERY smart job . So it’s now a Marquis with just an Auto Certes height adjuster mechanism?

That's a great conversion Chris.
Looks like you've been upgrading your workshop tools, you'll be needing an extension or shed soon.

Hope all's well and the lawn looks good compared to the before and after pics.

It would be interesting to find out what rear roller is fitted, was it a Marquis fitted with an Auto-certes front roller assembly, or was it an Auto-certes fitted with a Marquis cylinder (and presumably bottom blade) ? What the rear roller halves are made from should tell us this, cast iron and it is a Marquis, Alloy and it is an Auto-certes.

Definitely a Marquis chassis as there’s no slot for the cylinder disengagement lever . Also, Marquis  chain case cover without the hole for the extended roller shaft.

Could be the ultimate Bitsa , but very smart regardless.

Thanks Angus, yes I would say that's it, although it could be the ultimate bitsa as you say, by why would someone bother to go that far. Why the front roller was exchanged to an Auto Certes will never know, full speed front end collision with a granite statue perhaps? Spacing out of the auto certes front to get it to fit the chassis and work properly, says to me it was never the original.

That's a great conversion Chris.
Looks like you've been upgrading your workshop tools, you'll be needing an extension or shed soon.

Hope all's well and the lawn looks good compared to the before and after pics.

Hi Nick, hope you're well! You will have to pop over when things settle, I have some rolling pins and at least a sack of wood for you 

The other halfs relentless "hard landscaping" projects cause the poor grass, drawn a line under that now and also have a shed 

It would be interesting to find out what rear roller is fitted, was it a Marquis fitted with an Auto-certes front roller assembly, or was it an Auto-certes fitted with a Marquis cylinder (and presumably bottom blade) ? What the rear roller halves are made from should tell us this, cast iron and it is a Marquis, Alloy and it is an Auto-certes.

Lifting the whole thing up onto a workbench, my spine shouted "cast iron" previous pic from the strip shows also and highly magnetic.

Definitely Marquis!

Only just seen this thread - great work with those rollers Chris, a very nice job indeed 

Brilliant end result Chris!