# Scraping straight down and datum points



## ThunderDog (May 2, 2018)

Hi all,

It's been a little while since I've touched some scraping projects.  I've been on a roll of machinery upgrades, namely the new to me Wells-Index Super 55. But, that has only lead me back to scraping and checking of machinery.  As I've been reading Machine Tool Reconditioning(RTC), I've noted the sequence clearly outlined on where to start checking and where a scraper would begin.  If I'm understanding this correctly, the book lays out that a datum point for a vertical mill would be the spindle.  Using that as the datum point, one would progress to a sequence of checks starting on the column, then to the knee, etc., etc.  There is a part of me seriously contemplating such a project, but I may hold off for now.  However, I still want to work through the exercise of checking the state for all ways and sliding members.  As you will see the machine is going through a complete tear down.  The spindle has been sent to Wells-Index for a regrind to R8.  I'm asking the following:

Could the mounting plate for the vertical head be the datum point?  This machine does NOT have the ability to nod the head.  RTC recommends laying the column down to scrape the flat ways and then rotate the column to scrape the dovetails.  My cast iron plate is large enough to cover the entire surface of the column way and it has two rods that can be used to easily maneuver the plate.  Should I go for it or is there another method to check the vertical head mount relationship to the column way?  I was considering a straight edge held flat against the head mount and extending down.  This would allow me slide an indicator across the straight edge.

Second question:

Does one HAVE to start at the datum point and then proceed to the knee, saddle, then table?  I ask because a quick check shows that the table retains original scrape marks at the ends and has .002" of wear in the middle.  According to the text, if original factory scrape marks are present I should be able to use the original scrape marks as my starting point and scrape to the lowest point.  Thus scraping straight down.

Alright, I'm tired.  Hope all of this makes sense.


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## Bob Korves (May 3, 2018)

Usually one tries to find areas that are factory ground in the same setup the ways were ground in.  My take on Machine Tool Reconditioning's sequence for correcting the geometry of vertical milling machines is to do the column ways first, using an unworn reference surface on that face.  Your Wells-Index does not seem to have an unworn face in that plane...

Looks like plenty of wear on some areas of that mill.

Let's hear Richard's take on it...


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## Richard King 2 (May 3, 2018)

The MTR Book (Connelly book) has been referred to as the MTR book for years.  I have never seen it referred to as what you used.

One must understand the Connelly book was organized by Edward Connelly and he did not write all of it. He wrote parts of it and if you look at the beginning of the book he acknowledges several companies for their contribution to the book.

Much of the book was written by machine builders and many of the drawing in the book were drawn by Connelly who was a technical trades school teacher who had never scraped anything.  He guessed.  Many professional machine rebuilders laugh at the book.  I sell the book and reference it all the time, calling it the Bible of Rebuilding.  But as in the real Bible everything inside has to be looked at as a story and look for the meaning.
Or that's the way I look at it.

The better reference book  for tests is The George Schlesenger book Testing Machine Tools.  Many of the tests that Connelly used came from the TMT book.   All specs written over the years were based on the MTT book and not the MTR book.

https://pearl-hifi.com/06_Lit_Archi...s/Schlesinger_Georg/Testing_Machine_Tools.pdf

The rule of thumb professionals use on rebuilding a mill is:
1)  If the spindle is fixed or runs through a casting like a Horizontal Mill and cant be adjusted  then you start at the spindle datum and work from that.     Up and out as your following the spindle bearings axis.
2) If the spindle can be removed and can be aligned by either adjustment like a Bridgeport by worm and worm wheel or like your machine the head alignment can be tweeked to align you start at the column and work up.  Scraping the head to align with the rest of the machine.  A whole lot easier scraping that little flange last then scraping the machine from it.  

Many make the mistake of scraping a machine when the spindle is out of the casting, scrape the machine from the worn ways, then slide in the fixed spindle that can't be adjusted.  Make the tests and see the mis-alignment and then have to start all over.

As a rebuilder and you being a detective you measure the machine from unworn areas and figure out why and where the machine is worn and how much.  One needs to know that Mill tables bend and by micing (measuring with a micrometer) it only you assume the table is only worn in the middle your making a mistake. .  But if you flip it over on a granite table setting it on 3 points or 4 points and shimming it and measuring all 4 corners so they are shimed to the same height.  You will run a height gage over the entire length of the table top you will see the table (top) is bent convex because when the Tee-Nuts were over tightened the table stretched (Peened).

The scores you are pointing at is a super example of lack of lubrication and the ways rung together and pulled out the metal.   If it was dirt or chips the scores would extend all the way out to the end of the ways.

You need to clean up, lay the column on it's back and be the detective and measure from all the original machined areas of the machine that were not wear areas and use those areas to guide you to bring it back to the original datum's.  

Another ways rookie rebuilders do is square everything a perfect 90 deg. like the knee.  They fail to think about how cast iron bends and sags.  I also would recommend you Prepare or as I sometimes say "pre-qualify" the ways before using them as a reference to match fit ways to each other.

More later as I am also getting writers cramp.     Rich


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## ThunderDog (May 3, 2018)

Richard, thanks for the reference pdf.

This was my thought process:




Or is that flawed due to this(see below)?



Probably best to wait for the spindle to be returned after the regrind from Wells-Index.


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## Richard King 2 (May 3, 2018)

The top edge of the knee and bottom edge seldom saw any wear and you use that for reference.  You know I have been rebuilding machines for 50+ years and don't come on here and guess at this.  You can do it your way and stumble learning how.  I am trying to tell you the way I was taught and have taught new machine builders and machine rebuilders.   measuring off that small surface to scrape the column knee and table is a BIG waste of time.  Do it your way .  I was paid to do it and I gave a 1 year guarantee on my rebuilding to be as good or better then new machine accuracy.  I never had to go back and rescrape anything in all those years.  The spindle head is fit on the machine the last thing you do.


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## ThunderDog (May 3, 2018)

So, I'll summarize my idea for future readers, "It's the wrong idea and causes more work and inaccurate work".

You know better than me and I'm not contesting your knowledge or skill.
But, you do know I'm the rookie who will ask rookie questions, right?
Just trying to learn.

I'll continue getting things cleaned up and work on laying the column down.  Stay tuned.


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## Richard King 2 (May 3, 2018)

You seem to always go off in a rookie direction.  You read various pages in the Connelly book and interpret it your way.  Scraping that machine is easy....so easy, nothing complicated to it at all.   I am a Journeyman Machine Tool Rebuilder.  I have been rebuilding Jig Bores and Vertical Machining centers....consulted in Taiwan at new machine builders for over 30 years.  It is obvious your self taught and you are trying to teach with guesses as you have never done one before.  You can do it your way, but when I see you are doing it wrong I will tell the readership the mistakes your making.  I hope I don't come off as I'm bullying you.  Just telling you the way it is.  I would love to teach you the right way and save you a lot of time.  Be a detective and dismantle the machine completely and measure things.   I am not going to argue with you as I said scraping that machine I easy for me. 
Here is another book you need to read.  I read it 40 years ago.   Connelly book acknowledgement page,   Award I was given buy TAMI Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry


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## Richard King 2 (May 3, 2018)

Check out my web page  Handscraping.com

read under testimonials.  Here is an example.

"Ever since you instructed our first group of rebuilders, we have had numerous requests to have you back to instruct the remaining rebuilders. Your ability to adjust your class to fit our needs left a lasting impression.
Even though our rebuilders are experienced at scraping, they learned new techniques to improve accuracy and efficiency. The rebuilders had a lot of praise regarding the class and recognized your expertise as you worked along side them.
I strongly recommend King Way ... seminar for instruction in Basic 40/40 Hand and Advanced Machine scraping. It is excellent for anyone who is doing machine rebuilding or slide retrofitting."
*Norm J.*
Supervisor Machine Rebuild • TIMKEN • Canton, OH 44706

Thunder no offense but I have a few years under my belt helping people rebuild machinery.


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## ThunderDog (May 3, 2018)

I will agree that trying to figure out the tone of an email, letter, or post can be challenging.  I DO NOT BELIEVE that you are attacking nor  do I think you're bullying in ANY WAY.  I completely hear what you're saying.  I do not post with any mind set of knowing much of anything related to machine tools, machinists knowledge, etc. I take your experience and knowledge as a valuable resource.



Richard King 2 said:


> trying to teach with guesses as you have never done one before.


I'll be the first to say that I'm not here to teach a single thing.  That's why I ask questions.  I completely agree that I have NEVER scraped a machine.  Shoot, I've never even scraped a dovetail.  I'm a straight up 100% rookie.  But, I want to learn and I want to learn how to do it right. 

Trust me, if I had more cash I would sign up for your upcoming Ohio class.  But, my wife might be a little upset after having just picked up this machine.

I'll read up on more of what you shared with me.  Thanks.


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## Richard King 2 (May 3, 2018)

where you from?   I sometimes give away a class to someone with a hardship.  If you live close, maybe we can work something out.


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## ThunderDog (May 4, 2018)

I'm in Maryland. 

Back to the mill, it is ready to be laid back once I take the column screw out.  There will be a slight delay in progress as I will be out of town this weekend.  I'm determined to figure this alignment and scraping thing out.


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## Richard King 2 (May 4, 2018)

After you clean the knee up set it ways down on a surface plate and check things out.  They are normally worn on bottom flats and top dovetails.  Also set the coulum back on 3 points.  2 on bottom and 1 in center about where the electrical box is or just under the top of the wide flat way directly in the center of casting.  then lay your plate on and do some measuring.  Will add a few pic's on a smaller mill, being scraped.

Pic. checking column dovetail for parallel while scraping as shown below.


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## Richard King 2 (May 4, 2018)

Scraping top of knee to prepare it to fit column and test for squareness.  It will be fun helping you scrape your machine.


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## ThunderDog (May 6, 2018)

Progress, scrubbing and dirt removal up next:


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## wcunning (May 10, 2018)

Question for you Rich: 

I have a mill that I've been working towards scraping, much like ThunderDog here, and I've read many of your descriptions of checking a mill table here and on PM. I don't have a giant surface plate, just a little baby 18x24, so I can't lay the mill table on it and work from a datum surface. If I have a big wooden workbench and three spherical washer type stands (Unisorb leveling feet for bigger, nicer machines with spherical washers for uneven floors), how would I go about setting the table up on three points to go about checking it? I'm not sure mine has any unmolested factory surfaces at this point, other than perhaps the back vertical edge of the table...

Thanks,
Will


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## ThunderDog (May 12, 2018)

Hi all,

Finally got setup to measure.  Critique and correct the process as you see fit.  Video explains all that I've done thus far.


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## ThunderDog (May 13, 2018)

I made an alignment jig.  It's ugly looking, but it gets the job done.


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## ThunderDog (May 23, 2018)

Well, here goes nothing.


More roughing.



Many evenings later... (I'm at 10-12 p.p.i.)
You can still kind of see what used to be the low point on the top.
	

		
			
		

		
	




For those wondering, the knee doesn't ride on the entire surface.  It was just easier to scrape the whole thing flat.  At least that's what I did. Bottom view of knee.


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## ThunderDog (May 29, 2018)

I'm learning a ton. If you see something that needs addressed, feel free to let me know.


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## ThunderDog (Jun 22, 2018)

Progress continues.
The scraping of the knee has been slow.  I think a lot of it had to do with moving it on and off the column to match the dovetails.
Anyway, the back of the knee had significant wear at the bottom of the slides.  The top slides of the knee had .003" worth of wear in the middle and a little more than that from back-to-front when measuring squareness to the column.  The gibs have significant bow in them.  When I did some checks of the back sides for each gib on the surface plate I could slip a .006" shim under them.  They have now been scraped flat on the back sides. I now need to fit/scrape the sliding sides of the gibs to match the dovetails. The column gib needs a shim due to the cumulative amount of scraping of the column/knee/gib. No video for this part because, well I just needed to focus on the task at hand.  But, I took a few pics along the way.


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## Richard King 2 (Jun 22, 2018)

The gibs were probably bent and you could have straightened them before scraping them Also the back of the gib is what we pro's calls a "static fit so no more the 5 to 10 PPI is needed.  
Here is a You Tube a student shot in Norway and I was teaching them to scrape gibs around 5:35
Jan also has a number of video's on scraping on You Tube.




   All gibs come out bent and it only wears on one side and that cause them to bend.  Many never figure that out and scrape them flat and waste time as non the other side will need to be scraped to compensate for the unnecessary  back side scraping.


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## ThunderDog (Jun 22, 2018)

Understood.  I guess I'll chalk that one up as more time with scraping and a lesson learned regarding a better understanding of alignment.

Gotta say, this project has been super rewarding.


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## HMF (Jun 23, 2018)

By the way, I want to remind everyone that we have our own VIDEO library where you can post videos without using YouTube:

*https://www.hobby-machinist.com/gallery/categories/member-video-channels.6/*


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## ThunderDog (Jun 30, 2018)

Update:
Sliding gibs have been scrape fit to the dovetails.  For future wannabe scrapers, please see Richards comment above regarding some time saving analysis of your gib condition before scraping it.  Only after having learned this, did I find a write up by him on another site regarding proper gib scraping.  Regardless, I have learned that lesson the hard way and it will never happen to me again. Thank you AGAIN, Richard.

Here is the progress of the top of the saddle.
The bottom has been scraped to match the top of the knee, including the gib.  The scraping process is slow, but the results are very apparent compared to the day I brought the mill home.


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## Richard King 2 (Jun 30, 2018)

The gib (left in picture) side looks high in the middle and low on the ends.  When the saddle is sitting on the knee did you rap the 4 corners with a dead blow hammer and listen for the same thud?  Did  you set your plate on the saddle to get that that reading?   I would scrape the middle 40% out of the top of saddle so as it wears it wears outside first.  Also set a height gage on top of knee and indicate all 4 outside corners on top of saddle to top of knee they should be all the same height.   Did you set a granite or blade square on top of knee and check squareness to column.  The front of knee should be .0002" per foot high.   The top of saddle needs to match fit the table too.   Your scraping looks good, just have to sure to "hinge" the parts to be sure they are not convex or high in the middle.   I help you now and someday you help someone else.   Pay Forward is cool...


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## ThunderDog (Jun 30, 2018)

Before scraping I had set the saddle on my cast iron surface plate.  Setting an indicator base on the plate and moving it around I measured the top of the saddle.  It was high in the middle/gib side, just like you pointed out in your last post. I flipped it over so that the top was resting on the plate, hinged the part(it was spinning on the center/gib side)and rapped each corner to verify the high center. I could hear the "click" on the lowest corner(top right of photo in my previous post).  I've been scraping the high center out of it, admittedly slow and playing it cautious.  It does hinge 1/3 in from the ends, now.  Along the way, I have set a square on the saddle and checked square in relationship to the column. As you suggested, I will definitely scrape the middle down as you say.

I have a few questions about the table:
My CI plate is smaller than the table.
I have a camelback that is long enough, but obviously too narrow.

Do you scrape the top or bottom first? Does it matter? 
I read somewhere that the tightening of work over the years usually causes bow in the top, right?
After the bottom is scraped, I'm assuming it best to then go back to scraping the top saddle dovetails to fit it to the table?

Perhaps I'm over thinking this but, I want to have a way to verify my work beyond the camelback and I need to verify parallelism of the top to bottom of the table.  Would it be acceptable to set some 123 blocks on the CI plate and then place the table on the blocks to check top to bottom parallelism with an indicator? Maybe that makes no sense and is a dumb idea. Again, I just want to have a way to verify my work and right now I have a mental block at on this one.


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## Bob Korves (Jun 30, 2018)

Are there reference surfaces that can be used to establish the factory geometry?  If so,  scrape it in relative and parallel to the reference surfaces, and work on from there.


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## stuartw (Jul 1, 2018)

Okay, I've been trying to work up the courage to scrap my machine, and while it appears to be straight forward, the devil is in the details! It seems with even a small piece of scrap one can make a mess or over do it.


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## Richard King 2 (Jul 1, 2018)

Bob Korves said:


> Are there reference surfaces that can be used to establish the factory geometry?  If so,  scrape it in relative and parallel to the reference surfaces, and work on from there.




Bob is right as long as the part your scraping is in a relaxed state and on 3 points.  If the part is pulled down cockeyed and you induce a twist and you follow the twisted original surfaces you will screw it up.  It looks easy but it isn't.  That's why I am swamped with classes.   LOL


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## Bob Korves (Jul 1, 2018)

stuartw said:


> Okay, I've been trying to work up the courage to scrap my machine, and while it appears to be straight forward, the devil is in the details! It seems with even a small piece of scrap one can make a mess or over do it.


I tried for years to learn scraping on my own, studying every book and online reference I could find, and never achieved anything I was truly proud of.  A few months ago I attended one of Richard's classes and after a few days the light bulb started to turn on in my head, and the work became straightforward, accurate and even pretty.
The class was well worth the cost and the time invested.  I really think it is pretty much that you learn from a seasoned pro teacher like Richard, or try to find someone else with lots of experience reconditioning machinery in real life, who will take you under his wing and teach you right.  Warning, there are a LOT of wannabe experts...

Edit:  I am pretty proud of my usual ability to learn things for myself.  Scraping was not one of them.  Also, there is lots of goofy work shown on YouTube, and some good stuff, too.  As a novice, it is impossible to tell the difference...


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## stuartw (Jul 2, 2018)

Bob Korves said:


> A few months ago I attended one of Richard's classes and after a few days the light bulb started to turn on in my head, and the work became straightforward, accurate and even pretty.... or try to find someone else with lots of experience reconditioning machinery in real life, who will take you under his wing and teach you right. Warning, there are a LOT of wannabe experts...



That would be fantastic. perhaps one day I'll be lucky enough  and, yeah, there's lots of crap on yt and other sources and as for learning it on your own, not sure what to really add to what you and Richard have already said about it.


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## Richard King 2 (Jul 2, 2018)

I sell the Connelly Book "Machine Tool Reconditioning""   They are new and are called the Bible of Rebuilding.  It is an old book.   But worth it.  Plus it will act as a good sleeping pill if you read it in bed....lol   Also a DCD or HSB stick on how to also.  Have them all on ebay under Kingway scraping or it's in surface plates.  can PM me for more info


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## ThunderDog (Jul 31, 2018)

Well, here it is. I've enjoyed the process of scraping. I scraped the bottom of the table, then the top to match parallel.  Don't know what else to say, other than I'm stoked to make some chips with this thing.  I'm hooking up the wiring and VFD in the next evening or two.


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## Richard King 2 (Jul 31, 2018)

Beautiful work!


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## ThunderDog (Aug 15, 2018)

For future readers, the repairs to this machine continue in another thread.  You can scroll down to post #11 of that thread to continue following my progress.

Here is the link.


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