What Did You Buy Today?

Third reader arrived first.

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Well Lee Valley Tools got some of my money today — actually that’s not true. A friend gave me a gift card to Lee Valley a while back in return for some work I did for him and it’s been burning a hole through my kitchen table ever since. Today seemed like a good day to take a bit of the heat off it, so to speak.

After more than fourty years of buying from Lee Valley I don’t need a lot of stuff from them any more but I thought the little Taig 4-jaw independent might work well on my small rotary table. It’s really nicely made and has a good feel. And I think it’s the first tool I’ve ever received that’s been packaged in diesel oil!

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And I was curious about this precision oiler. I have a number of small micro-sized oil cans but I needed one with a long proboscis and controlled delivery. This one has an interesting operation much like a ball point pen except the tip is a tapered plug that allows oil to pass when the button is depressed. The oil flows by gravity, so no pressurized splork of oil all over the target.

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The rest of the items aren’t really machining items but rather for the machine. I’ve recently cleaned up one of my Mom’s old Singer 15-88 treadle sewing machines and am having a lot of fun playing around on it. There’s a surprising similarity between running a treadle and running a manual milling machine I think — both require a fair degree of coordination and dexterity while retaining your wits as to where you’re driving! It is cleaner though, and brings back lots of fond memories for me.

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So that’s my cache for the day. Thanks for looking, and here’s the recent focus of my affection for anyone interested. It’s from the 1940’s.

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-frank
 
I just got a vise stop for the mill. Sadly I went for the china crap and it is bad. I even do not know where to begin describing it.

First of all the build quality is sooo bad; scratches, burrs, bad paint job, you name it.

2nd it’s not as advertised. I mean this thing is huge. A vise stop should be used for work indexing. But this thing can be used to actually hold the work. The picture shows it installed on the mill table next to a 4” vise

What I received:
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The advertised pictures show a much smaller vise stop. Either the photo was edited or that vise and table were so huge the vise stop looked tiny

Are all vise stops supposed to be that big???

Adverisment:
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Anyhow, I will scrap it and just buy a Tschorn vise stop. The local tool-supplier has it in their catalogue.


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Local estate sale held one virtually 'on-line'. We bought a couple of small items and went to pick them up today - last day.
Lo & behold there were three tables full of hand tools and such. Owner was a diesel mechanic for (50) years.
We were the only ones there other than the the sale dude. Kind of felt 'normal', except for breathing through a face mask.
Everything was half-off marked price. (oh-oh)
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A vintage Lufkin #1911, will make for a good 'rough' mic.
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The 'prize'! Sweet shop made hammer.
I'm thinking I'll replace the head with a larger brass one.
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Plasma cutting consumables, multiple pipe taps, some 90/10 mig gas, welding helmet (Speedglas SL), a R8 x ER 20 collet chuck and a set of ER 20 collets and 45 feet 3/4” diameter ground and polished shafting.
 
I picked-up a new 5 drawer tool cart from Harbor Freight. Very impressed with the quality. The sheet metal used was pretty thick- even the packaging was very well done. Assembly took about an hour and the design used extra reinforcement pieces to ensure stability. Now I need more tooling to put in it.

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I think the tool chests and carts are the best items that Harbor Freight sells. I bought one of these carts a couple of months ago for my surface plate which now lives in the top compartment.
 
I've been casually watching out for a 6" rotary table, and this "like new" Taiwan made Homge rotary table turned up on ebay for less than the cheap Chinese ones I had been contemplating. Even the shipping was reasonable. The center hole is MT2 which is convenient as that matches the mill spindle, lathe tail stock and my dividing head.

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and with the 4" Sherline table that was being shared between the mills. The new one will be a much better fit for the Clausing. :)

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I think the tool chests and carts are the best items that Harbor Freight sells. I bought one of these carts a couple of months ago for my surface plate which now lives in the top compartment.
+1 on those HF 4 and 5 drawer carts. I have one each at my lathes and Tormach mill. Really good price and quality.

Bruce
 
I got this from Harbor Freight today.

I'm about to go back to work after a stroke and my employer offered to let me run parts on my machining center at home. I got this to keep their tooling seperate from mine.

Anyway I've got a craftsman box, snap on, and a matco bottom boxes and this is nicer. Worth every bit of the $280 I paid for it.

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