The Home Machinist!

Stack them up...cut 10 at a time on the mandrel with a steel washer on the ends Look ma...no burrs... I'd substitute aluminum for the steel washers. It won't have an effect on the tool. Also, if you have several, the same aluminum washers can be reused with each batch. The support they provide will...

Stacking with end washers worked pretty well.

I have an assortment of copper sealing washers but the OD is usually too large. Is there an easy way to machine these? When I try to machine them on a mandrel, it creates a good size burr that is then difficult to remove on such a small soft part. If I take the next size smaller washer and try to dr...

That is a very interesting comment on gravity. The holding fixture is rigid and the DTI spring certainly seems strong enough not to be affected. It would be interesting to flip the lathe upside down for a true test. Rich - Are you saying that you had the same diameter piece in the chuck and tailstoc...

I have an Enco 13-40 lathe and am trying to adjust the tailstock to be on center. I zeroed a rod in the 4 jaw and clamped an indicator on a live center to take readings while spinning the indicator around the rod. I realize that the live center can add some inaccuracies but this is the way I'm plann...

I could only get a dimple mark when trying to drill a jaw with the carbide tipped drill, even after sharpening. I ended up a "mickey mouse" looking fixture mentioned in one of the links. It went OK and the chuck looks true at least near the grinding diameter. However, when I examined the j...

I'm finally ready to get started and have what seems like a stupid question. The carbide tipped masonry drill does not look very rigid. Will a HSS center drill be able to make a centering hole or even mark? If not, what do you do to keep the drill from walking at the beginning of drilling? Sorry abo...

Harold_V - I'm not following this. What is the wheel vs stone?
"the wheel (not stone) is dressed parallel with the spindle where it makes contact with the jaws"

Since the chuck and grinder are both spinning and the grinder should pass all of the way through, is dressing very critical?

I see a lot of videos showing the jaws being loaded with force in the opening direction which does not make sense to me. Drilling the jaws is an interesting idea. To load them for grinding, would there need to be a lot of clamping force? Just eyeballing the end of the jaws, it looks like a 10-32 or ...

I just ran some 0.098" rod in my lathe and noticed that it was held back in the chuck but the first 3/8" or 1/2" could actually flex around a bit in the chuck. I can actually see wear in the jaws so need to correct this. This is some kind of economy Chinese chuck and the wear suggests...

The shaft turned and drilled OK but I may have gotten a little squealing with the drill. I did double drill. I do remember using large drills in stainless and if you went too slow you could create hard areas. I also remember some raw stainless coming with hard sport but that was 45 years ago. I trie...

Thanks for all of the ideas. My vise is not great so I ended up machining a sacrificial parallel and putting the shaft on top for support. I did not realize a vise without v block would hold it adequately. It was a good idea to verify vise was square to table. I had it stick out the end of the vise ...