"GEAR HEADZ" Change the Look of Your Boots or Whatever

 Whether you hate harleys or just want your boots to be different than the masses, this ible is for you. Well by now, I think you know that i love GEARS and what they can do, how they look, and how they work. They can do many functions, adding speed, or torque, change dirrection of rotation and more. To me i just love how they look. In this instructable I`ll show u how to cut gears and do something creative and decorative with them. I ride a vintage yamaha 650 twin, but the only boots I found that I liked was "harley" boots, and I`m not one of those people to sport a logo just because it`s "trendy" or "cool"

Step 1: Ugly Logos Have Ta Go

After owning the $250.00 boots for about ten minutes I`m off to the garage. The badges on the heels were easy...2 screws n toss!!! The "buckle" badges were not as easy. I first thought about removing them completely and adding a heavy steel ring the same as on the inside ankle of the boot. Looking around my shop, I see no rings or materials for said rings. However I do eyeball my four inch right angle grinder, alreaded GEARED up (see what I did there LOL) with a medium sanding disc. The "harley" logo on the buckle has raised letters.....GRINDER IT IS!!!!  Sorry...the pic has the hole in it for the gear, as I wore the boots with the ground buckles, and heel badges removed for a couple of years before i got to this project.

Step 2: Choices

Still not real happy that you can still see the trademark crest shape there, thought about bolting on my skull head lincence plate bolts through the buckle. I thought it would still look to "harley" to me. A day ot two after I finished my brass gears (another of my ibles) I held the larger gear over the buckle , and "GEAR HEADZ" were born!


https://www.instructables.com/id/hand-filed-decorative-brass-gears-for-steampunkers/

Step 3: I Am Rambling...lets Get Started

Like the brass gears choise, a suitable design, search the web. I picked the easiest one, with just circulare hole, because, I was using aluminum (to see if i liked it better than the brass one) and using a different cutting method than my previous gears. photo shop the gear to the size u want, I used just under 2 inches. #1 becuase the aluminum stock I had was 2x.25". #2 and it hid the crest shape. Print it out on "label paper" and apply it to your material. I used the "reusable" kind? I dunno....its says reusable. Your gear patern is now on your stock and ready for cutting.

Step 4: WOO HOOO!!!! CUTTING!!!!!

This time i decided to use an old craftsman bandsaw i got frm my father years ago...ten dollars got me a metal cutting blade. I decided the bandsaw would be faster and i wanted to make them fast just to see if i prefered aluminum on my boots or brass ones. I started by cutting away the outside of the patern making it a circle in stages. Making an octagon shape, then carefully taking away more material using small straight cuts ( bandsaw wont do tight curved cuts, and nobody locally had metal cut blades for my scroll saw, without ordering them.

Step 5: Cutting Teeth, and I Dont Me Teething LOL

I call this "the game for the man with too many finger tips lol.  Cutting in  twice for each tooth and using the saw to remove the little triangle scraps buy sharpening the angle of the cut slightly to remove the little piece. It took about 30-35 minutes to make them toothed gears out of my square stock. Much faster than the hand filed versions previously mentioned.

Step 6: Rounding N Shaping

This part is pretty simple, dill out the center hole ( i used 3/16th bit) and nut n bolted it creating an "arbor" to spin it in my drill press and using files, a poor mans metal lathe if you will.  making the gears more round by dragging the file flat against the edge whilst spinning in the drillpress, then holding the file on an angle creating the bevel on the teeth. Time to file the inside of all those teeth i cut, the red mark in the pic shows me where to start n stop filing. I just "eyeballed" the centers of the rest of the holes, starting with 3/16ths, and working up to 5/16ths for the final size. I used the drill press for this and my countersink bit to bevel the holes.

Step 7: The Challange

The girlfriend says to me "it would be kewl if ya made em spin" ugh really? le sigh LOL.  I found the 3/16th hole i drilled was a little larger than the hardware i had on hand, and found some thin small brass tubing in my junk ( i think it was frm an old camp stove) it just fit the hole in the gear and my bolts just fit inside. i cut it about 1/16th longer than the gear was thick. I used cast metal skulls made for licence plate bolts. i cut off about 3/16ths off the back of the skulls using my vice and a hacksaw. ( I didnt want them to stick off too far) The headz were made to accept about a 1/4 inch bolt but was too big for this project, so using the bit shown in pics in my dremel i hollowed out the exess casting, then using the gears for positioning i super glued the bolts into the hollowed out heads ( I recently found loctite`s gel control super glue to be my fav instant holding glue) then filled the hollowed out headz with JB cold weld. ( another fav) Sorry...I just realized I never took any pics of the brass bushings. I anyone is needing to see them i can disassemble the GEAR HEADZ.

Step 8: Finishing and Assembling

I finished the finish on the gears using 320 grit wet in the kitchen sink, giving them a brushed finish. holding the gears on the boot crest and marking the center for the skull "axels", i drilled them (the buckle crest)  with my cordless and an 11/64ths drill bit, which was a better size than the 3/16th i drilled the gears with originally. Then i slid on a washer onto the skull bolt, then the bushing, the gear and followed by another washer (holes in the washers must be too small for the bushing to go through if u want them to spin) then put it through the hole I drilled in the buckle crest and followed by a "nylock" nut. DONE!!!!!   if they spin while riding with my feet on the forward controls of my bike i will take the gears off and polish them to a mirror like luster, who says rappers are the only ones with "spinners" LOL. hope you liked my ible....any questions or additional photos required I will post apon request. NOTE: this ible took longer than making my GEAR HEADZ