Recent content by clevinski

Basmak, congrats! Really nice job!

Hi, DJP... In thinking about it, I think I had the most trouble with a piece of steel that had not been welded, but cut with an oxyacetylene torch. I don't know if that would make a difference or not, but the edges seemed almost hardened. I will have to try machining some future welds with...

Wow! That is some nice work, Bazmak! I wish I could weld that well...

Hi, Basmak, I respectfully disagree. For example, you can find aluminum soft jaws at these links: MonsterJaws, MSC, Abbott, Rovi. But each machinist should use what he is comfortable with, and certainly steel soft jaws will last longer in a production environment. For hobbyists, I personally...

Hi, Bazmak, John Lindo, a friend of mine in Spain, got me turned on to soft jaws a few years ago. He is such an advocate of them that he has written an article that will appear soon in Home Shop Machinist magazine. His basic approach is to buy one set of commercial soft jaws, and machine them...

Ron, That's the plan right now... I'm planning for the casting-free Little Husky.

Hello, All, Re Stuart Kits, I had emailed them concerning U.S. distribution. Please find their reply below; perhaps it is of interest to others. "We only have one dealer in the U.S. The Great Toy Steam Company you can find them on the net, other than that you can purchase straight from our...

Many thanks to everyone for the replies and valuable information, especially to Blogwitch for the useful chart! I'm going to put together a list of parts and materials for the Little Husky, and run it by you guys to see if I made any errors. It seems like a set of Stuart 10V, unmachined...

Hi, All, I have spent summer and most of the fall rebuilding my 7x14 mini-lathe, scraping the saddle, cross-slide, and compound; extending the cross-slide movement; modifying the saddle adjustment system to allow adjustment from above; implementing John Lindo's gear reduction system to...

Another thought occurred to me... If the diameter of the wood is known, (for example, if you plan to turn pen bodies that are 3/8 inch in diameter), you could take a larger diameter length of round metal stock, maybe one inch long, and drill it longitudinally for the outer diameter of your...

Hi... Is there a reason you could not use a collet chuck for this application? The various collets would allow you to hold material down to very small sizes.

.......... Thm:

Bouch, Thanks for the advice... I am definitely not ready for VERY careful tolerances!

Hi, Al, Thank you for the reply and the information. I bought the bearing from a storefront on eBay, and I assume they are a cheaper brand, so that is probably the issue. I am just surprised at the dimension; if I had to guess, I would say the shaft needs to be .255" or so, which is WAY...

Hi, All... So... I was a bit unhappy with the loose fit of the crankshaft on my Lucy air motor to the bronze bushing. For some reason, it rapidly became too loose, even with only 15-30 minutes of total run time. So I thought, before I moved on to a new motor, that I would resolve this by...