The Home Machinist!

And that's exactly what I annealed the part in. A small charcoal grill! Coal would get you even hotter though. Maybe some Pokehontes low smoke/sulfur ,(for the neighbors sake).

I have some A-2 air hardening steel. It is annealed right now. If you heat it and let it cool in air it'll be rock-hard. Is this a type of hss. If not what exactly is hss. Does it have a special name/letter abbreviation? Just curious, as it's something used in many production cutting methods routine...

Throw it in a REALLY HOT bed of coals. Let it get bright orange and stoke/fan the fire well. Leave the item in the fire until it burns itself out and is cool enough to handle the piece. This will soften a lot of hardenable steel. Now you can turn it, but it'll be softer than mild steel. So then you ...

I'm an old dog, and these new tricks don't come easy! Speaking as another old dog, part of the problem is often our lack of ability to see clearly what we're doing. I had vision that was the envy of everyone until age 45. I could grind a form within a thou with some concentration----but those days ...

Well I went back out to my shop. I looked a bit closer at the problem tool. There is indeed a "rub ground" spot on the side of it. I was apparently too overly concerned with bottom clearance angle and neglected the side clearance. Gave the side a bit of relief and it cut like a champ. I'm ...

I spent a bit of time last night trying to get a lathe tool to cut. Turning some 1/2 drill rod oil hardening. It squeals and leaves a "beaver chewed" finish. The shavings were like I've never seen yet. Looked like a saw blade. This comes off the heels of grinding a bit that worked beautifu...

I read the sharpening threads and gleaned much info from it. The hard part is when one tries to grasp a mutifaceted cutting edge with only a few pictures or just a verbal explnaition. The wheel dresser I picked up was indeed a silicon carbide variety and not diamond.

Ive always been one to hop on a grinder and fix tools when needed. Now that I need hss lathe bits it's gone to a new level. I finally grabbed a wheel dressing stone. This is reallly nice! A real pleasure to have that surface the way I need it. Flat on the front and an edge on the sides. Now all I ne...

I want to turn a faceplate for my machine. I was planing on making a dummy spindle to use for fit of thread and register boss. My main question is whether this is a place where one uses an indexable carbide threading bit. (for the internal threads on the faceplate)I just can't see how one could grin...

The first part I bored was not really a bearing, but constructed exactly like one. It was the surface a perforating blade butts against on a perfing/scoring/folding machine. The tolerances were very tight. I made it out of nyloil. Came out quite well, considering it really was my first ever attempt ...

The classic way to bore finished gears, is to place a dowel pin in three equal places around the gear and chuck on them. The important thing is for the pins to be as close to the pitchcenter of the gear as possible ! The pins may even be soft metal, as long as they are all identical in Diameter. As...

Take a look at what I did for re-boring wheels: http://www.chaski.org/homemachinist/viewtopic.php?t=75448 The "shoes" fit over the chuck jaws, are machines in place to the proper diameter and will grip over a wide area, so as not to damage your gear teeth. Alternately, you could bore a pe...