A work collegue of my wife was good enough to gift me some engineering gear he had left from the days when he worked as a tool maker, amongst the gear was a 5 tenths Mitotoyo DTI a useful bit of gear but sadly the bezel crystal was missing and there was no holder. I managed to get hold of a crystal the right size and after watching a few you tube videos I managed to get it fitted - as supplied the crystal is almost flat and needs to be pressed in the middle while supported on the out edge - this bows the crystal reducing it in diameter at the same time, the bezel can then simply drop on and once the pressure is taken off, the crystal springs back, the edges which are chamfered lock into a recessed groove in the bezel. Not having a crystal press I found a short section of electrical conduit that was just about the same size as the outer edge of the crystal, after facing it off flat I laid the crystal on the conduit, put my thumb in through the bezel and pressed on the centre of the crystal this was enough to allow the bezel to drop into place on the crystal over my thumb, I was a bit stunned at how easy it was.
That part taken care of I went on a search for a holder, I decided to have a go at making my own and for this I needed a small dovetail cutter, I used a broken 1/4" diam end mill shank and ground a 60 deg dovetail single lip cutter from it on my Quorn grinder, it's quite small and I would have no chance to do this by hand. In retrospect using a broken end mill shank was not a bright idea as it made the cutter quite short, so only 3/8" inch or so was left protruding from the collet chuck, with the chuck so close to the work of was hard to see what was going on.
That part taken care of I went on a search for a holder, I decided to have a go at making my own and for this I needed a small dovetail cutter, I used a broken 1/4" diam end mill shank and ground a 60 deg dovetail single lip cutter from it on my Quorn grinder, it's quite small and I would have no chance to do this by hand. In retrospect using a broken end mill shank was not a bright idea as it made the cutter quite short, so only 3/8" inch or so was left protruding from the collet chuck, with the chuck so close to the work of was hard to see what was going on.
