The Home Machinist!

Easier if you start with 1/4" - just move the decimal over one place.

Got my box today. Thanks Steve!

There's another version at windy.com that has features like barometric pressure lines etc. Fascinating? Down here they can be downright terrifying when the wind goes real fast in a tight circle! I watched our last two hurricanes approach on Windy and a couple other platforms. This did help me make i...

Long ago, the City of Augusta Georgia used one of those with the Savannah River as the power source - they built a canal around the falls and used that drop. This pumped drinking water up from the river to the treatment plant. The docent that was telling us about it said the thing that people rememb...

Sent message on your contact form on the AMN site.
Thanks

I do! I do! PM me your email address please.

Pete is spot on. One thing I will comment on: "I've seen YT videos showing little Atlas horizontal mills taking depths of cut my 3 hp Bridgeport clone might struggle with" I was told the way to set the feed on a horizontal is to keep increasing it till the machine starts jumping around on the floor,...

I use those numbers as a starting point. But they do give a *range*, so you can hit somewhere in that range to suit your fancy. On lathe work I tend to use the upper range (only cost of burning a cutter is a moment at the grinder), on the mills I usually aim for the lower end of the range (milling c...

For feeds and speeds, I typically use Little Machine Shop's calculator. They have cutting speeds listed on one page, https://littlemachineshop.com/reference/cuttingspeeds.php and a calculator nearby. https://littlemachineshop.com/mobile/speeds_feeds.php I see now they have updated the calculator to ...

I'm in the "fancy Quick Change" camp. The savings of time while working is great. I grab a turning tool, put it on, it is on center. Need to face something? Change blocks, it's on center. Threading? Parting? Just put the block on the tool post and it is centered up ready to go. I snagged a Dorian of...

I was at our local RR museum yesterday looking at a building project with some non-railroaders. We were in a storage area not open to the public. They looked at me funny when I started giggling. FRED seems to have been around a lot longer than we thought.

That got me to doing some remembering/research - though Westinghouse invented the system in 1868 or 69, depending on sources, and the Pennsy was an early adopter, they didn't become mandatory until 1900 under the RR Appliance Safety Act of 1893. (I recall George W had done some lobbying, purely look...