The Home Machinist!

Somehow I missed those Chick vises Jaxian. Never used one, but from what I understand there supposed to be even better than the Kurts and those look to be in really good shape. The only other I know of that's supposed to be compareable to the Chicks would be the dual station Orange vises. Sol at Ora...

The one issue I found with my ER-40'S is as far as I know they don't make collets that will hold tool shanks smaller than .094". And below .094" in the ER-32's they only collapse .015" for each collet size verses the .039" for the larger ones. If your ever needing to hold real sm...

They still make quite large shapers today in India and maybe China. A place in the U.K. had an advertisement for new large commercial sized shapers and that's how I found out they were still being made today. There's even at least one YT video showing one and they actualy looked to be quite well mad...

No chuck strikes then somebody with some attention and skills ran it. A real good sign since it was likely lubed often and properly and looked after. Probably you know of it, but the Practical Machinist Bridgeport / Hardinge forum has a lot of great information about them. Babin Machinery make a ret...

Many thanks Harold, that's a question that's bothered me for a long time. While I've never timed it, my guess is I've been doing pretty close to your numbers. More by luck than skilled knowledge though.

It's not all that uncommon up here to hear of peoples remote cabins being ransacked by black bears since there not exactly stupid. If they figure there's an easy food supply they'll do a lot to get to it. Years ago I was talking with a guy that used to be an electrition who would be sent in to vario...

I've got an old book titled Tool and Gage Work by Goodrich and Stanley that's part of the American Machinist Library and first written in 1907 that might help to answer your question. They mention extremely precise work being done on master gauges and I think that was before jig borers were even inv...

It's really cool to see the grizzlys in the wild Bill. I've seen as many as 65 in one morning when there was a fish run on the Kimsquit river. And believe it or not black bears are far more unpredictable than the grizzlys are. They'll usually give a fair warning before attacking if they feel threate...

Tools are no different than guns. And a gun is just a tool also. Anything recommended for gun storage for rust prevention works just fine for tools. Cosmoline was and maybe still is used for very long term gun storage but as mentioned it's a pain to clean off before you use the tool. But if it would...

My Mitutoyo 960 series level has the box designed so the level gets stored on it's side and not upright resting on the base. WD 40 is terrible for rust prevention. It's little more than diesel with some aromatics added. Some 3 N 1 oil or fine sewing machine oil soaked paper fully covering the levels...

I sure hope TRX doesn't mind me adding a question to his. I've seen lot's of mention about diamond dressing wheels but I've never run across a mention about how fast the diamond should be traversed across the wheel face. For example a 1" wide wheel. About how many seconds should it take to dres...

I'd say mill first for sure. Milling to coordinates can be done with almost zero layout unless it's a real complex part and you do a layout just as a double check of your numbers. A dro doesn't fully remove the need for checks by measuring, so in my opinion it's a bit less important on a lathe than ...