The Home Machinist!

if you are buying a blast cabinet, make sure you get a good one, they bought a harbor Fright blaster for work and the thing is a nightmare. leaks dust everywhere. It would be well worth it to get a good safe blaster, or let the work out to someone who does. Believe me a cheap blast cabinet is a disa...

There is also a cylindrical square that is not square on the end, on purpose. The end is made slightly out of square and lines are etched on the side of the cylinder. Then you put the square next to a part to be tested and rotate the cylinder until the gap disapears. (back lit of course) then you ca...

Do not wast your time and money. The USA has become so utterly corrupt that a patent is worthless to the inventor. Now to crooked lawyers they are quite profitable. Did you know that there is a virtual army of lawyers at the patent office who's job it is to steel any good ideas. And steel they will....

if it is real old it will be common carbon steel 1095 or so. and real usefull for a blacksmith. If it is newer it will be something like L7 And me personally i have not had much luck with heat treating it. Probably error on my part. If you weld it it will most likely shatter off where you weld it. B...

i used to use red brass pipe at work. It was misserable to use a die on it. Absolutely worse than steel or even stainless steel. They actualy make special dies for copper alloys but i have only seen them in books. Try to use a more machinable yellow brass. when i had to thread it i would open up the...

I had a bunch of screwdrivers to sharpen. This is the block and gage i made up to do it on my little belt sander. Everything worked out real well. the block holds the shank and can be rotated from back to side to side to get all the edges square on. Then to check out everything i made up a gage, (ki...

I did a similar thing. Cut the thread and every thing looked right but it just would not thread. I measure everything and thread gaged it, every thing was right. After careful examination i found out that the origional thread was not an acme, but instead a truss thread. I admit it I screamed.

I looked all over the web and could not find anything. Today i met a Machinist i know and he had the answer. The dial does in fact turn at the same RPM as the knob. But the tiny little numbers are separate from the wheel and the numbers are changed each time the wheel goes around. Off course they ar...

Brown and Sharpe claims that there are no gears involved, but i can not find any pictures of inside that thing. And no way do i want to try to take it apart. Sure enough it would never go back together right. Anyway you got to see this thing. two cylinders of similar diameter, about 1/8 inch apart. ...

actually the spindle thread is 50 threads per inch. Fifty turns of the knob will get you one inch. but fifty turns of the knob will only give you ten compleat turns of the inside dial. Yet the dial and the knob turn together at the same rate. So the inner dial appears to turn at the same RPM as the ...

I use screw drive handles for all kinds of things. If you clamp the tip in a vise. and then heat the shaft with a torch the handle can be pulled right off. then put the handle in a lathe chuck and bore the handle out to fit what you want it for. Trying to pull the handle off cold can be a challenge.

I just bought a Brown and Sharpe mic off EBay. "Digit-Mike 599-10-1" First off i might say that i am totally pleased with it. I checked it against gage blocks and it has an error of less than half a ten-thousanth All the way through it's range. It is also like totally easy to read. Even fo...