2017 POTD Thread Archive

[brino]

Not made in the shop today, but recently.......metal projects in my shop, wood projects in my buddy's shop.....

A while ago I made a tool rest for my friends wood lathe, some pictures here:
http://hobby-machinist.com/threads/...in-your-shop-today.14637/page-310#post-462256

Back then I speculated about about being "paid" with a bartered pen. He went for it and made me this pen from a blank I gave him.


It was from a 3/4" square blank scrap from a homemade snow shoe frame that broke during a test bend.
I was nearly certain this was a piece of maple that I bought (although ash is recommended for snow shoes I could not find any in the required 9' length).
He thinks it was actually oak....it sure looks like it to me, too. (and the grain was way too wavy for a snow shoe frame!)

However there was one problem with that first tool rest I made.....it did NOT have enough offset. He could not get as close as he wanted to the small diameter pen. It will still be useful for larger projects.

But it was a great excuse to get out to the shop and build another tool rest!

I came up with this:


The base is slightly under one inch to go in the socket on his lathe, the bent neck is 5/8" round bar and the head is 1" flat bar, about 6" long and 1/4" thick.

The neck was bent using my bender like this:
https://www.princessauto.com/en/detail/compact-floor-mount-metal-bender/A-p8536625e

He said this tool rest was perfect........and asked what kind of pen I'd like in return........so I let him choose.

Here is pen number two:


This one is mahogany and a much bigger and heavier pen.
It feels great in the hand.

I could get used to this bartering stuff!

-brino

 

[savarin]

Ahh, the cosmic exchange market, I love it.

 

[f350ca]

Gotta like the barter system brino. Nice pens !! and graceful looking tool rests. If you really want to make him happy use something like 4140 that can be hardened for the top part. Its amazing how much the chisels wear the rest and produce dings that stop the chisel from sliding smoothly.

Greg

 

[brino]

Its amazing how much the chisels wear the rest and produce dings that stop the chisel from sliding smoothly.

Funny you should mention it, because before I built him those two tool rests I actually re-machined his original cast iron one to remove all the dings and divots from the bottom corners of his chisels......and fixed the warped casting......
-brino

 

[Hawkeye]

A while back, Threadkiller posted a thimble as a first project. Not being able to find any thimbles after my house fire, I added it to my project list. Today, I hunted up a small piece of stainless steel that a friend had given me a couple of years ago. I'm guessing 304 by its characteristics. Non-magnetic, machines quite well. My first time using stainless and first time knurling on a taper. Can't use the clamp knurler for that, so I used a bump triple-header I'd gotten with a lathe or something some time ago. I found that the course set did the best job on the variable diameter.


I used 5 degrees on the compound for the outside taper and again for the boring bar on the inside.


It took a while to part it off, but left a pretty good finish. I sanded off the nub in the centre. If I find I need some traction on that surface I'll make up a tapered clamp and use either the shaper to cut a cross-hatch pattern or the lathe to apply concentric circles.


It's a lot heavier than the sheet metal ones I used to have, but will work well for the leather and canvas I sometimes hand sew.

 

[Cheeseking]

Looks good Hawkeye. Could have been 303. Only because I have never heard anyone say machined well after cutting 304!

 

[Hukshawn]

Still working on the tool chests. Down to finishing now. The first coat was a heavy cut orange shellac rubbed in with steel wool to help fill the grain. Now have two coats of hand rubbed varnish on. Its boring quality control so not sure how many coats they'll get.




Greg

All my shepherd does in the wood shop is steal the small cut offs and chew them into a wet, slimy, pile of chips on the laundry mat... to which I wind up in trouble for from the wife.

 

[woodtickgreg]

Funny you should mention it, because before I built him those two tool rests I actually re-machined his original cast iron one to remove all the dings and divots from the bottom corners of his chisels......and fixed the warped casting......
-brino

I really like the ideas you had for getting the rest closer to the work. Only thing I might have added to it w
Would maybe have been a piece of hard drill rod across the top edge because of the wear by the tools discussed.

These are some simple 1" 4140 round bar rest I made for a friends full size lathe for turning big stuff. You don't have to get so close to the work with the bigger stuff.

If I remember right the bigger one was 14"

This is what it looked like mounted on my full size wood lathe.

 

[Hawkeye]

Looks good Hawkeye. Could have been 303. Only because I have never heard anyone say machined well after cutting 304!

Thanks for that. When I tried searching the internet for possibilities, the only references that came up for non-magnetic seemed to be 304 and 316. I'll tag it 303 when I store the stub away.

Metal Supermarkets will be opening here on March 27. I should stock up on some good SST and some 7075.

 

[MozamPete]

Finished my ER32 collet blocks.
As the stock wasn't quite large enough diameter to make a full square the size a wanted, I decided to flatten the radius left at the corners so it can also be used for indexing 8 sides if needed.


And I put the hex one to use straight away cutting the 6 C-spanner slots in the collet chuck