Best Way To Mate A Grizzly/bald Eagle Spider To Backplate

kgowedan said:
NOTE - you can't fit the Bald Eagle BE1125 spider to a D1-4 back plate, as it is drilled for four (4) holes and the D1-4 back plate is three (3) hole arrangement. No mater how you turn it, it will not clock (lign-up) without touching a hole in the back plate for drilling/threading/mounting. The only way is to get an extra thick backplate or use a thick faceplate that will allow you to drill up to a hole on the opposite side with out interfering with the D1-4 locking tabs/pegs. The Bald Eagle item is useless!
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You resurrected a 3 year old thread. I have since finished the 1024 VFD project and the Bald Eagle spider lives in the lathe sort of permanently. I have this 1024 dedicated for chambering AR15 barrels, 94 count to date. The Bald Eagle serves me well.

BTW, the 1024, as I showed the backplate in the original post, is not D1-4 spindle, it is threaded. As you can see in the pictures, I end up using a faceplate and just bolted the two together. So far the bolted scheme is holding tight.

When I said dedicated, the compound is set precisely to bore a taper the same as the cartridge body taper. I drill then run the micro100 carbide mini boring bar 0.050 short to the shoulder, finally run the finishing reamer, and set the headspace. For threading the little 1024 does a nice job plunging in with the cross slide with the barrel held by the spider.

Besides this 1024 lathe, I have 2 larger ones for contouring, as well as for chambering other blanks that won't fit through the 1024 spindle bore.


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P. Waller said:
I understand what it does, will an independent 4 jaw chuck not do the same job?
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Yes it can, more ways to skin a deer.

If you look how I use the spider, those little finger clamps with ball bearings allow the chamber end of the barrel to pivot when dialing the outboard spider. Then again many good shooting barrels were chambered on steady rest. What works best? It is whatever you are used to driven by the limitations of your lathe.
 
I ended up getting the South Bend "thick" backplate from grizzly. http://www.grizzly.com/products/6-1-4-D1-4-Back-Plate-Thick/SB1394 . The extra thickness of the back plate will allow you to mount the Bald Eagle Spider using the four mounting holes of the Spider without interference with the three D1-4 mounting studs. They should have put more thought into the making of this Spider, guess that's why it is listed as discontinued in some places to buy it
 
Bumping this one again! I have been in communication with Bamban and he has been very helpful in assisting me with a spider to shorten the OAL between inboard and outboard points of contact. To begin this process I bought a D1-4 back plate and the Eagle spider from Grizzly. I'm curious about a couple of things:
1. Is a recess in the oversized backplate recommended to keep the bolted on Eagle spider positioned for bolting? In other words, I envisioned facing a recess into the backplate which matched the OD of the Eagle spider.

2. If that is the case, what is the preferred method of achieving this? I suppose I work "outside in" to determine the boundary of the recess. Does this make sense? Alternatively, I could use the DRO to determine the center of the spindle bore and then proceed "inside out"?

Thoughts?
 
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