Thanks to the generosity of Scruffy and his Christmas Give-away, I now have a surplus of R8 Collets. He sent me 21 used, rusty but not worn out collets. Between 1/8 and 7/8 there are 11 of them including #3 and #7 drill, and couple of 1/16, a couple of 1/8, a couple of 1/32s and all the 1/4 and all but one 1/8. plus a fair number of duplicates.
But what am I going to do with them!
I'm working on a router bit, want to cut four flutes on it. If only I had a 3/4" 5C collet for my Hex/Square blocks. Wait a minnit, I've got R8 collets just lying around. Why don't they make Hex/Square blocks for R8 collets!.
Seems I ought to be able to do something....if I made an adapter for the 5C to R8 end, and an adapter for the tail end, and sucked the collet in with a 7/16-20 socket head cap screw, could I then use the Square block to cut the flutes on my router bit? Sure, why not!!
So here's my results.
I don't have a grinder so I had to do the best I could with my Atlas/Clausing MK2 6 20 lathe. The angles are good enough, even though they may not be spot on, they are concentric.
Not a very good picture, but you get the idea. Here it is assembled.
Now I can cut my flutes and give the beading cutter to my buddy. Well, I'll harden and draw it, and do a bit of hand relief on the cutters. But it should be good to go. Bearing and all.
If there's a bunch of interest, I'll work up a print of the parts and discussion on how I proceeded, probably not including the glitches I had to overcome.