A Quartet of Shopmade Whatsits.

[joe_m]

Here are four different "whatsits" gathered from various machinists chests. All are shopmade.

First on the left - a two piece item. Each hunk of metal is 6x2x2 (not exact) and very heavy. The layout of the holes for each one is identical. The middle hole does not go all the way through. It is threaded. Of the holes on each end - the smaller diameter hole is threaded and does not go all the way through. The larger hole is not threaded and does go all the way through. I thought maybe they were made to stack and screw together, but with the layout of the holes and the fact that they dont' go all the way through, that is of course not possible. Another possibility is that the through holes are used to bolt them to the mill bed, and the threaded holes are used to hold-down the workpiece?????

Moving to the middle top, we have a 2-piece chunk of metal that when assembled is 4x2x1.5 with a 1.25ish diameter hole in the middle. The two pieces are held together by gigantic hex bolts. You can see where it was kissed by an end mill on top (the space between those two shiny lines.) The connecting line of the two pieces is the bottom edge of that milled line.

Middle bottom is, design-wise, a smaller version of middle top. It has two holes in it instead of one but both holes are on the line where the two parts screw together. I think it, and the previous one, were made to hold round objects upright so the ends could be worked on.

That leaves the far right one. I saw a copy of this on another forum in a "shopmade tools" thread but forgot what it was supposed to do. There are two pieces of metal with all the holes in them. They are sandwiched together and held by those two pins you see upper left and lower right. Where everything else in the pic might be for holding work, I seem to remember that this piece was made for stamping out or making holes or ??????

 

[Ed Hoc]

Joe, the tool on the right is a "shim punch". I've got one that all the fellows at work made a bunch of them. The shim stock goes between the plates. You'll need some punches that fit the holes closely. We used dowel pins or drill bushings ground flat on the end, to a sharp edge. These tool sets are fairly expensive to buy from the catalogs.

The rest of the items ???

Ed Hoc

 

[Bill Gruby]

Without stealing this thread, in answer to the shim punches, you can get a set good enough for home use fron HF. Agood set will set you back 2 to 3 times this price. On sale these will go for under 20 bucks.

"Billy G"


http://www.harborfreight.com/9-piece-punch-and-die-set-95547.html

 

[george wilson]

Any hardness to the HF punch set? A good set costs more because it will be made of decent tool steel. Likely,the HF set is case hardened mild steel a few thou. deep.

 

[Bill Gruby]

Hello George:

The HF set is as you say, case hardened. They will do for most things in the home shop. When they go on sale again I will get a set and do a review.

"Billy G" )

 

[psween]

The top middle one looks like a crude version of a gunsmith's barrel vise. You would clamp the barrel in the vice, then use the appropriate action wrench to unscrew the barrel from the action. Could be used to hold any appropriate sized round object though, so might not be anywhere close to that specific. The diameter is pretty close to most barrels though.

Patrick