Tail stock drill chuck arbor

[mattthemuppet2]

this turned out to be a bit of a drama as with most things I make. Still, it only took me a week, so it went pretty fast Not really sure it deserves its own thread, but I took a bunch of pictures, so I might as well use them!

Aim - new 1/2-20 threaded arbor for my mystery lathe's mystery tail stock taper, so I can fit a 1/2in drill chuck for those larger holes that my current 3/8 drill chuck can't handle

Scrap stub axle, with honorary locked up bearing still in place


hacksawed down to about the right size


trued up in the 4 jaw after turning down the to be threaded stub. This takes a while as there's so much flex in the headstock (>15thou by hand pressure!) that I have to be careful not to misread the DI.


artsy pics of the lathe "hogging" off 0.45mm at a time


taper turned (lots of time with sharpie in one hand and tail stock in the other). 8-32 bolt in the end is to finely adjust the ejection of the arbor. Works really well!


cutting the wrench slots on the "mill" to stop the arbor spinning in the tail stock


After I completely mangled cutting the threads with a die, I finally got the chuck to snug up against the register. Run out isn't great, but it's tolerable and the chuck is a resurrected Jacobs that appears solidly beat upon, so it's probably better than expected!

 

[RandyM]

Well done! Thank you for sharing.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

thanks Randy! It's a fairly trivial project in the grand scheme of things, but everything takes me an age to do so I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

 

[RandyM]

thanks Randy! It's a fairly trivial project in the grand scheme of things, but everything takes me an age to do so I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Hardly trivial. I am willing to bet you'll get a lot of use out that chuck now. And each time you use it, you will be reminded that you made it possible.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

very true I get that feeling from most of the stuff on my lathe and drill press, as both of them came with next to no tooling. Making a back plate for my new chuck is going to be even more of a challenge!

 

[RandyM]

very true I get that feeling from most of the stuff on my lathe and drill press, as both of them came with next to no tooling. Making a back plate for my new chuck is going to be even more of a challenge!

Yes but, the more important question are you having fun? Also, that is part of the idea of this hobby is to keep tackling things that are more difficult. Once you put your mind to it you'll do just fine. The worst that could happen is you mess up and have to start over. Good luck on the back plate. Make sure we get to see it too.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

I have fun when it works futzing with the threads was pretty frustrating, but it got there in the end. It was also a bit of an annoying project as this was the 3rd attempt to make the arbor, but at least it's done now! Backplate thread will go up as soon as I start, hopefully this year.

I have a much more complicated project in mind (machining a housing for a bike light), so a lot of this tool making stuff is good practice for that. It'll push me waaaay beyond anything else I've done!