The Hobby-machinist Die Filer

Hi Bill did you finish this project? Your work on this has the signature of a master of his trade.
 
Nice work,Bill. I am looking forward to seeing the finished machine. I have 3 die filers. The one I use the most is the Butterfly,as it is the easiest to set up. I have a beautiful "Duplex Die Filer",which is much more complicated. It can file DOWN into an opening,as in a box with no top. It is a beautiful piece of quality work! But takes much longer to set up. My third is a very old one that I converted to a jig saw.

I put a variable speed motor on the Butterfly,as all these die filers run WAYYYY too fast,which REALLY hurts the files. The motor is only 1/2 H.P.,which is plenty strong enough. You can buy a little 1/2 H.P. motor with control from Penn State that would run a die filer well. It was intended for use in a mini lathe(The Penn State one). Quite cheap.
 
Bill's die filer looks just as good, if not better, in person. I was at his place a couple weeks ago.
 
Bill Gruby said:
I just had a random thought -- what if we added a removable overarm and plunger style blade holder?? Maybe I should stop thinking. :rolleyes:

"Billy G"
Click to expand...

I'm just trying to learn what this filer is/does... :guilty:

Yep... complete newby here.. :D

But as usual. You're teaching me a lot Mr. Bill!
 
Another great project Bill. beautifully done as usual. I'm a little intrigued by the red markout dye, I've only ever seen and used blue.

Back in the early 60's when I was an apprentice toolmaker, we had a couple of die filers., one quite small table only about 6"dia. The larger machine was a square table about 12-14" across. Everything was cast iron and steel, with bronze bushes.The tables were cut with grooves about 1/8th inch deep and about 1/2" wide both ways the lands were about1/2" wide, the idea was that filings would collect in the grooves and not get dragged across the table. The larger machine also had a small blower with a pipe that could be directed into the work to blow the filings away.

Both machines were enclosed and had a connecting rod on a crank pin for the drive, these machines were old but fairly quiet. Also just below the hole in the table a conical hat was fitted where the lower end of the file was attached, this deflected all filings out to a collecting tray that was tilted to one side and the filings all fed into a container which had to be emptied every day, thus keeping the filings out of the works. The smaller machine was a single speed, but the larger one was 3 speed affected by a simple pulley change at the back of the machine. These machines were in almost constant use.
 
Bob, back in my apprentice days we had a boss that was a bit weak with the sight of blood, any amount. We all used the red dykem so most blood did not show.

"Billy G"
 
Fair enough, good solution, The red dye appeares to not be available here in downunder or if it is, I can't find a supplier. All the obvious suppliers only have the blue, I always thought it was the only one, until I saw the red on here. I guess it doesn't matter which one you use. It just was a question that needed an answer.
 
See if they can order it for you. It's called "Steel Red".

"Billy G"
 
I've never used real marking out fluid only red and blue wide tip permanent marker pens.
Unfortunately cutting fluids etc dissolve the inks.
Is the dykem impervious to this?
 
Yes Charles, I've never had a problem with them.

Billy G"
 
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