- Joined
- Mar 23, 2014
- Messages
- 33
Why, with all of the great quality screw drivers available for very little cost would you spend countless hours machining aluminum or brass ferrules and tops, turning wood handles, grinding and polishing stone caps and assembling the lowly hand made screw driver? Well I guess to use all of those tools you've been collecting for so long, make something that is useful, and hopefully be able to give something unique to those friends or relatives that maybe appreciate tools like you do...
Anyway...I've produced my 2nd project, the "prototype" screw driver using my new machining equipment, my old wood and stone working machines, some aluminum round stock, some scrap oak and some new screw drive tangs from Veritas (very reasonable $$). As with the first project (ball turner) I'm learning a lot and making plenty of mistakes. In the photos the wood is not yet finished and the stone cap is yet to be placed. My ball turner did come loose and put a couple of gouges in my otherwise neat concave ferrule turning. From this prototype I've decided to add a brass spacer between the wood handle and the aluminum top to fill that space and add another color element, bevel the leading edge of the aluminum ferrule and use only one pass on the knurling on the ferrule so the detail looks the same as the top. I'll also grind down the bottom of the set screw so it sits flush with the ferrule surface.
I'll finish the prototype and post more photos.
I have lots of exotic wood scraps laying around for handles so the plan is to make sets of two or three (flat and Phillips or different sizes), place them in a wood gift box (carved so as to use my CW mini cnc carving machine and personalize it) and give them at Christmas...no I didn't say which Christmas...
If you have the time maybe it's not so bad a way to use it after all.
Cheers!
Anyway...I've produced my 2nd project, the "prototype" screw driver using my new machining equipment, my old wood and stone working machines, some aluminum round stock, some scrap oak and some new screw drive tangs from Veritas (very reasonable $$). As with the first project (ball turner) I'm learning a lot and making plenty of mistakes. In the photos the wood is not yet finished and the stone cap is yet to be placed. My ball turner did come loose and put a couple of gouges in my otherwise neat concave ferrule turning. From this prototype I've decided to add a brass spacer between the wood handle and the aluminum top to fill that space and add another color element, bevel the leading edge of the aluminum ferrule and use only one pass on the knurling on the ferrule so the detail looks the same as the top. I'll also grind down the bottom of the set screw so it sits flush with the ferrule surface.
I'll finish the prototype and post more photos.
I have lots of exotic wood scraps laying around for handles so the plan is to make sets of two or three (flat and Phillips or different sizes), place them in a wood gift box (carved so as to use my CW mini cnc carving machine and personalize it) and give them at Christmas...no I didn't say which Christmas...
If you have the time maybe it's not so bad a way to use it after all.
Cheers!
) !
