Rickabilly,
What an informative response!
First, I hope that now you are out from under the stress-- physical and mental-- that your spine has been able to heal and you are enjoying a measure of health.
As Bill said, a rear toolpost is mounted on the far end of the Cross slide "table" and simply put is just a very basic toolpost, , the blade is turned up side down and you use it with the lathe turning in the normal direction, so no chance of spinning off the chuck...
In trying to answer my own question backchannel, I did some research and found photos of rear toolpost setups. Quite a few 9x20 owners simply purchased an extra AXA toolpost-- Phase II apparently the favorite-- and built a mount to run it from the rear with cutoff tools upside down.
I needed the mobile shop as we could only test the equipment in the regions that we were needed to acheive approval, for example, when we wanted European certification it meant we were required to test in the European Union, If the testing wasn't going well and we needed a different variation of fuel injector or some such device I needed to be able to make it, also for the fitting of instrumentation into combustion chambers and that sort of thing, the workshop was invaluable, we also had full engine building facilities (except block machine work) as we needed to strip and rebuild test engines on the fly...Incidentally my Avatar is one of my early fuel injectors, I always loved art deco science fiction, I suppose that much is obvious from the Avatar.
Sounds like you have an awesome set of machining skills. And thanks for the explanation of your Avatar. It's always interesting to hear why they are chosen.
They were interesting times, loads of stress, massive hours, Coming home to a five star Sheraton hotel in the expensive bit of London after working 14 hours in a machine shop in a field, fifty miles away, impossible to put into words.
Certainly something I have never experienced!
...too many years machining teaches you all sorts of tricks, one of those is to mount a second champher tool on top of the main turning tool, but hanging out from the left side and upside down usually under the first screw of the four way toolpost, when you need to champher, just reverse the spindle and move the tool in to clean the edges up because you dont need to unclamp any of the toolpost parts your main tool is still set true to the DRO or dials, so it's easier than turning the toolpost onto two or more positions the champher tool can be made from a piece of "flatish" HSS and has a simple 90 degree point with lots of rake and lots of clearence, so it cuts very cleanly, enen an old piece of file works well if you keep the speed down it will last for a long time and costs nothing, the flatter the tool the smaller the hole in which you can champher.
Excellent information. Anyway you could fly over the pond and do a little tutoring! It would be great having someone with such vast experience at your side to teach you the tricks of the trade. At any rate, we have this forum and thanks so much for taking the time to make such insightful observations and passing along your hard-earned knowledge.
If you think of any other tips or hints, please post them.
I'm curious if you have a home shop, or are you burned out from too many years in the field?
Thanks again.
Ken
