So I have hit a snag with my .60 Crusader build. I have also not been able to visit the shop as much as I would like. I have visited here almost every day if not twice a week.
I started on a Rocking engine to take a break from the Crusader and ran into a problem. I have no small tooling! No 2-56 tap, no wrench to hold it, nothing!
So I made a tap wrench. This is in Guy Lautard's "The Machinist's Bedside Reader" on page 35 (this is the first of the Bedside series).
First pic is how I try to start every project. Nice and neat. None finish that way but at least I try! :
I use the calculator quite a bit as it helps me avoid mistakes as well as keeping tabs on how much diameter left to turn to size. The small rectangular piece is a diamond hone I use to sharpen my tooling should it get dull. Large black rectangle is a magnifier. At 40 I just can't seem to see things like I used to! :big:
Turning to size. I started with a small cut off of drill steel at .750 diameter. I use collets as much as possible so I try to keep everything turned to a collet size if possible.
Handle turned to shape from .500 diameter. Guy has a 2.5 degree taper on the arms of the handle and 7/16ths section for the middle. My piece was just long enough for this with a little left over. I have learned to listen when someone says "Don't remove part from parent stock until the last possible moment!". I parted it off for the mill work.
This is a cutoff tool I made from a piece of 5/8ths HSS. I broke my last parting tool and was stuck until I could persuade SWMBO to let me make a tool order. This is not going to happen anytime soon... So I decided to make one as I didn't want to stop. This time I read some and found a tidbit in George Thomas' book "The Model Engineers Workshop Manual". He put a small V in the top of the cutoff blade. This lets the chip curl up so it doesn't get stuck in the kerf and jam up the works. I have been using this for a couple months (6 or 7 shop visits) and it has changed the way I approach parting. I used to dread it and now it is just one more operation.
Milling the 7/16ths section flat to 0.275 thickness.
Drilling the center hole for the tap.
Body roughed out.
Turning Knob thread to size.
Threading 10-32 via single point. This is staged as I was too busy concentrating! This is the first single point thread I have done and it worked out well. I turned the outside diameter for the thread, put in a relief at the knob end and a pin for the far end that bears on the tap. Now all I had to do was infeed until I started to touch the pin and I was close. From here I just followed all the things I have read: 1 or 2 passes with no infeed, 1 pass with cross slide infeed of .001 instead of compound slide feed, 29.5 angle on the compound slide....
Worked well and I was able to part the knob off for the next operation.
Following Bogs thread on tuning up a spindexer I have modified mine as well. Works real well considering I use the collet chuck in the lathe. I can't swap lathe chucks from setup to setup because my spindle is an A1-5 nose and there is not enough headroom in the 6x26 mill. I placed the knob in a piece of .750 stock threaded 10-32 and proceeded to mill 5 notches using a .375 ball mill.
Came out reasonably well. The collar that holds the main spindle tight to the frame had a small amount of play and before I saw it the assembly moved. I was able to clean up the boo boo and made sure the collar was tight. Since this is the first time I used it in anger I made a note in my experience notebook about the collar for the future.
Tap wrench finished with a 6-32 tap in the holder. This is the smallest tap I have and looking at some of the models I want to make (like the aforementioned Rocker) I will need to tool up for smaller stuff! I hardened the body and the knob by heating and quenching in synthetic motor oil (all I had). I polished up the handle and left the knob black for contrast. I noticed some small flaws I missed earlier and went back to try to fix them and the file just slid off. I guess the hardening worked!
All that for this! I would like to thank everyone here and at the other boards for showing the way to make some of these things as well as being so humble about it. It makes someone like me, new in the hobby, take a chance on trying the techniques and ending up with a "nice bit of kit" to boot!
Even though I don't always get the shop time I want I am able to keep learning by watching you guys and reading all the books I have. Between the two I don't think there is much I won't accomplish. Now if I can get Gbritnell to do a tutorial on how he gets his parts to look like they do I will be ready for anything!
I will do a separate write up on the rocker when I get it running. I know you guys like videos but I haven't gotten that far yet computerwise (unless you guys use the camera's video function).
Thanks for looking and good luck to those that try this as I now have a keepsake that I can pass down to my children (one of many to come!).
Sean
I started on a Rocking engine to take a break from the Crusader and ran into a problem. I have no small tooling! No 2-56 tap, no wrench to hold it, nothing!
So I made a tap wrench. This is in Guy Lautard's "The Machinist's Bedside Reader" on page 35 (this is the first of the Bedside series).
First pic is how I try to start every project. Nice and neat. None finish that way but at least I try! :
I use the calculator quite a bit as it helps me avoid mistakes as well as keeping tabs on how much diameter left to turn to size. The small rectangular piece is a diamond hone I use to sharpen my tooling should it get dull. Large black rectangle is a magnifier. At 40 I just can't seem to see things like I used to! :big:
Turning to size. I started with a small cut off of drill steel at .750 diameter. I use collets as much as possible so I try to keep everything turned to a collet size if possible.
Handle turned to shape from .500 diameter. Guy has a 2.5 degree taper on the arms of the handle and 7/16ths section for the middle. My piece was just long enough for this with a little left over. I have learned to listen when someone says "Don't remove part from parent stock until the last possible moment!". I parted it off for the mill work.
This is a cutoff tool I made from a piece of 5/8ths HSS. I broke my last parting tool and was stuck until I could persuade SWMBO to let me make a tool order. This is not going to happen anytime soon... So I decided to make one as I didn't want to stop. This time I read some and found a tidbit in George Thomas' book "The Model Engineers Workshop Manual". He put a small V in the top of the cutoff blade. This lets the chip curl up so it doesn't get stuck in the kerf and jam up the works. I have been using this for a couple months (6 or 7 shop visits
) and it has changed the way I approach parting. I used to dread it and now it is just one more operation.
Milling the 7/16ths section flat to 0.275 thickness.
Drilling the center hole for the tap.
Body roughed out.
Turning Knob thread to size.
Threading 10-32 via single point. This is staged as I was too busy concentrating! This is the first single point thread I have done and it worked out well. I turned the outside diameter for the thread, put in a relief at the knob end and a pin for the far end that bears on the tap. Now all I had to do was infeed until I started to touch the pin and I was close. From here I just followed all the things I have read: 1 or 2 passes with no infeed, 1 pass with cross slide infeed of .001 instead of compound slide feed, 29.5 angle on the compound slide....
Worked well and I was able to part the knob off for the next operation.
Following Bogs thread on tuning up a spindexer I have modified mine as well. Works real well considering I use the collet chuck in the lathe. I can't swap lathe chucks from setup to setup because my spindle is an A1-5 nose and there is not enough headroom in the 6x26 mill. I placed the knob in a piece of .750 stock threaded 10-32 and proceeded to mill 5 notches using a .375 ball mill.
Came out reasonably well. The collar that holds the main spindle tight to the frame had a small amount of play and before I saw it the assembly moved. I was able to clean up the boo boo and made sure the collar was tight. Since this is the first time I used it in anger I made a note in my experience notebook about the collar for the future.
Tap wrench finished with a 6-32 tap in the holder. This is the smallest tap I have and looking at some of the models I want to make (like the aforementioned Rocker) I will need to tool up for smaller stuff! I hardened the body and the knob by heating and quenching in synthetic motor oil (all I had). I polished up the handle and left the knob black for contrast. I noticed some small flaws I missed earlier and went back to try to fix them and the file just slid off. I guess the hardening worked!
All that for this! I would like to thank everyone here and at the other boards for showing the way to make some of these things as well as being so humble about it. It makes someone like me, new in the hobby, take a chance on trying the techniques and ending up with a "nice bit of kit" to boot!
Even though I don't always get the shop time I want I am able to keep learning by watching you guys and reading all the books I have. Between the two I don't think there is much I won't accomplish. Now if I can get Gbritnell to do a tutorial on how he gets his parts to look like they do I will be ready for anything!
I will do a separate write up on the rocker when I get it running. I know you guys like videos but I haven't gotten that far yet computerwise (unless you guys use the camera's video function).
Thanks for looking and good luck to those that try this as I now have a keepsake that I can pass down to my children (one of many to come!).
Sean
