The Home Machinist!

So yesterday I needed an end mill and only the double ended bit was the right size. I looked at the bit and it said 9/16". So I pulled the 9/16" collet, and the bit slid in almost up to the "round" but would go no further. Then I realized, while the end mill was 9/16", its "round" was 5/8" even thou...

My take based on my ShopTask Tri-Power mill/drill/lathe. I bought a bunch of mill bits here and most were double-ended. When I try to put them in my collets (R8s), it seems that they don't even go in to the smooth shanks and the collet is just grabbing onto the bit portion. This can't be right. I th...

In the mean time, I made an additional brace that should allow me to "pre-load" the alternator. I cut/drilled/dechromed/painted the broken bracket that I had removed to anchor the back of a tie rod to a header bolt and made a bracket to anchor the front to the J-bar. I can tighten this rod and it pu...

An idler may be do-able using the bolt holes that would hold the P/S pump down by the crank. But that would be a project for another time.

I use a 1"-wide Gilmer belt on my Small Block Chevy to run the alternator and water pump. The belt puts a lot of stress on the mounts and will tweak the alternator forward and down as the engine revs. The standard alternator set-up uses a lower mount that lets it rock to adjust the belt tension and ...

I made a jig of wood to hold the two pieces in alignment for drilling in the press and the holes came out perfect. I test mounted it and it is hardly visible. The angle is so gentle that I really don't need to worry about the alignment of the bolt heads/nuts. http://www.audioheritage.org/photopost/d...

I don't think it is a matter of a defective bracket so much as compensating for a misalignment of the existing parts. The alternator seems to have a bit of an inward cant because the surface that it mounts to (the header's flange) has a bit of an inward cant rather than being parallel with the cente...

No, because the back edge is curved to match the bracket it goes under and if I predrilled it then milled it, I probably coudn't get this curved edge to align perfectly. Once the metal is thin, it is a simple matter to match the back edge with the sander. Next time I will secure both pieces to a woo...

I made another out of 1/8" think aluminum this afternoon, though I still haven't drilled it. I used the same technique as before except that this piece was longer than necessary, so I could cut off, rather than grind down, where the ends were attached during milling. That saved a whole lot of time a...

Well, unfortunately the shim was destroyed when drilling the hole though the thin end when the bit grabbed the material and twisted it around.

The mounting hole through the alternator's body that the bolt goes through seems to be a bit off rather than perfectly parallel with the centerline of the engine and this is try to compensate for that. There is a slight "hump" in the black bracket between the posts that I will try to press out with ...

Thanks guys. All done except drilling the two holes. I clamped it at its ends using the the two medium clamp bars on one end and the two short clamp bars on the other. The difference in height between these bars is about the same as the bar stock thickness. Then I just ground down what was left on t...