Patio's projects

[JackF]

Just another example of the need of our lathes and mills. good work Pat.

Jack.

[GlennW]

Yep! Pat proves over and over again how practical a small lathe and a good bit of "know how" can be.

[Patio]

Thanks Jack and Glenn, for the vote of confidence. I try!

I can't tell you how happy I am to be able to have both. They are very handy to me. I only wish I had started sooner in life. Maybe I got a little from my Grandpa, he was a machinist, although I never new him growing up.

Tonight I am playing with a very small plasma cutter, I borrowed. It will only to up to .2". I am turning large pieces of sheet metal into small pieces of scrap, just for the heck of it.

Pat

[Patio]

This weekend I made a tooling pallet for the mill. I need a way to hold a part, at an angle, for a project I have to do on the Sportster rebuild. I saw this on a post, here I believe. It is a simple thing to make, it just takes time. If I had it to do again, I could make it better. I did learn a couple of good lesson, during the process.

I took a few pictures of the process. Here they are.
The al. plate was given to me and the round stock was acquired from a local scrapper.

I cut the stock to a length that would fit in the vise jaw, when put in length ways.

I tuned the stock down to a diameter, less than the height of the vise jaws, and parted it off in the lathe. The diameter is about 2.7".

I cleaned up the end, from the parting cut. Is in the 4 jaw with pieces of a pop can, place between the jaws and the part, to keep it form marring the work.

To the milling machine, to cut the recess for the plate. The vertical surface is on the center line of the round stock, and the horizontal surface is just less than the thickness of the plate.

Holes were then drilled and tapped.

More pictures in the next post!

[Patio]

The plate was drilled and counter bored for cap head screws. I do not have a counter bore set or bits. I use drill bits that have had a 180* grind put on the end. In al. I don't use a pilot hole, just an easy start. In harder material I would start the hole to a shallow depth, with a drill having a normal grind, before using the flat ended drill bit. You will notice that I have an extra set of holes in the plate. When I drilled and tapped the round stock, I had written the distance form the vertical surface to the center of the holes, on the plate itself, with a sharpie. The problem came when I needed the dimension, it had gotten smeared beyond reconition, sometime during the job. I took measurement with a set of dial caliper and guessed at what I had written. I missed by .020. I know this because I was able to measure the gap with a set of feeler gauges once I had it assembled. The second try came out real good.

I fly cut both edges.

It is capable of standing up to a 90* angle.

I drilled and tapped a hole in the middle of the pallet for a jacking grub screw, to allow me to adjust the plate level with the table using an indicator. Once I had it set close I fly cut the whole plate.

I still need to drill a bunch of holes in it for securing part to it, but for now it will serve its purpose.

I do have a 14"X14" angle plate sitting on the floor by the mill, I just can't pick it up to get it on the mill without some help, so this little, light weight, fixture should come in handy for some time to come.

In the post I copied this idea from, one the guys had attached a small piece of round stock to the bottom of the pallet so a jack could be used to help hold it in position. I will make one that will be removable, sometime in the future. (probably the fist time I actually need it.
Whether this is going to work for the project I have in mind, I haven't a clue until I try it.

More to come, just as soon as I find out what it is.

[hammermill]

Well if it doesn't work you will have a nice sine plate. That is not bad

[Patio]

Hammer mill, The pallet has no provisions indicating like sine plate. Although I recently bought a sine bar, at a community garage sale, but have not inspected it yet. I will have to figure out how to use it on the plate to get a angle set up, sometime when I need to.

This past weekend I had the grand idea of changing a leaking hose bib on the side of our house Saturday and pulling the rear wheel on my Sportster. I ended up spending the entire weekend changing the gas water heater and rebuilding the closet that hold the furnace and water heater. I have hot water, the closet has a new vinyl floor, and there is now paint on the walls. One of the interesting things about the remodel and another reason I love having a lathe around. The space where the water heater sits is 22" wide, the water heater is 18" across. The only pans, available, for underneath the water heater, are all 26" across. In the end I found a tube used for feeding of livestock, made of rubber. With a little effort and a grinder, I cut the top off the tub, (burnt or melted may be better a better choice of word to describe what really occurred). Next I needed a 1 1/4" hole for the drain. Rubber is not easy to cut, I needed a punch, the size I do not have. So I made one.
Here are the pictures. I had also had just learned about using the punch on the end grain, of a wood block, to make it easier. Worked like a charm, a beautiful hole.

Maybe next weekend I will get the hose bib changed. I still need to check the amount of damage done, where the water had run under the house.

What's next? I have no idea!
More to come I hope.

[JackF]

Ah, the joys of home ownership. Will they never end?

Jack.

[redneckalbertan]

I had also had just learned about using the punch on the end grain, of a wood block, to make it easier. Worked like a charm, a beautiful hole.

I'll have to remember that. I always used a block of wood if I cared about the pinch or a steel plate if I didn't care about the punch. The steel plate works well, but takes its toll quite quickly on the punch. The block of wood that you used, hard or softwood?

[Patio]

Jack, ownership does require maintenance. The new water heater is installed and working great. I did replace the flooring and paint the walls of the closet it sits in. The following weekend I did get the, outside hot and cold water faucet installed. This past weekend while out of town, a wind storm came through and took down a section of fence. I got it put back up tonight and adjusted the front gate. The gate had swollen up from the rain.

Redneck, the type of wood is not important, although I would expect a hardwood to last longer, if frequently used. What is important is to use the end grain of the wood block, so as to allow the cutter to enter the wood without much resistance.

I started making a set of soft jaws for a friends lathe, that I will use to turn a brake rotor, for one of my bikes. You can see that thread here. http://www.chaski.org/homemachinist/vie ... 1&start=60
I started with some blocks of al. that I had laying around.

I milled the block to square them up and get them close to a equal size.

Then I started to lay them out and figured out that close was not going to make my job of laying out and milling easy. So back into the mill they went. They are now all the same size. I made quite a pile of chips doing so.

The blocks are all laid out now, ready for milling.

More chips to make!

[JackF]

Looking good Pat, keep us up to date.


Jack.

[Patio]

I finished making the soft jaws for my friends lathe. It did not happen with out problems, but overall went well.

I did not take any pictures of the milling of the bottom of the soft jaws.
Here is a picture of me boring the counter bores for the cap screws. This was the final step in the making.

This is the finished project. As you can see I made a mistake in the milling process on the bottom of one jaw. I may make another one, but am going to try this one first to see how it works. Also one of the counter bore holes, (the first one I made) was a little larger than I wanted, so I stopped and made it smaller, before continuing.
Tops.

Bottoms.

The mess the process made.

I saved the chips, and have about a third of a 5 gal. bucket full.

Next is to go give them a spin on my friends lathe, while facing my front brake rotor.

Still having fun!