Brass wheel arbor

For the clock wheels I made, I need arbors to support both the wheel and the pinion.  I decided to make these out of brass, with pivots to match the bearings I've been making.  Here's the overall design:

The arbor is cut from 1/4" brass rod, starting from one side, and then turning it around for the other.  The steps are made either using the slide rest or by hand with a graver, but the pivots are made by hand.  First, the rod is inserted in the chuck, and then lengths marked.

Then, the steps are cut.

Once the step are cut, the end is parted off, and the pivot is shaped using the graver.  Below shows the completed pivot, and is in progress of being parting off.

After this, the arbor is turned around and rechucked, with the other pivot cut.  Here's the completed arbor.  (The extra groove on the small step is a mistake.)

Here's the arbor fitted with a wheel and pinion.  It takes a bit of fiddling to get the arbor diameter correct.  It seems like a few taps of the hammer are useful to set the arbor into the wheel.

Here are two wheels fitted together in the depthing tool.  The fit is fairly sensitive -- a millimeter one way or another is enough to mess up the meshing.  Once depthed correctly, the gears run very smoothly!