The Home Machinist!

Yes, normalizing. The other option would be annealing, and they're not the same thing. The casting is already known to be soft, so the temperature of annealing isn't necessary. What is required is to eliminate internal stresses, so when the straight edge is machined and then scraped, it's stable---m...

It isn't uncommon, at least in modern manufacturing techniques, for a spindle to be made from heat treatable materials, with specific areas heat treated (easily done with induction heating). Armed with that thought, it may NOT be a good idea to weld on a spindle. That said, even if you did, and achi...

Are you going to toss it out in the yard for a couple years to "season" it? That seems to be a subject now open to considerable debate! I don't have the luxury of doing that, thanks in part to my advanced years (84 years old now). Seasoning is known to help relax stresses, and there's no ...

I have had heat treated shafts (first motion shafts of transmissions ) hard chrome plated then ground to spec. Yep! That's a great way to restore worn surfaces. I restored a set of flat rolls for a manufacturing jeweler that way. A friend had a cylindrical grinder in his shop and allowed me to use ...

One of the considerations of welding on a shaft is if it has been heat treated or not. If it has, it's not a good idea, not at all. As an example, is the shaft made from heat treated 4140? I do not profess to be a weldor. I do profess to having a working understanding of precision machining (worked ...

the curve is interrupted by those rectangular tabs that look like a place to engrave some data. What are they for? Handles. A straight edge shouldn't be subjected to local heating when being handled (to avoid expansion which translates into error in flatness), so wooden handles will be mounted to s...

<snip>I've tried to loosen the tapered spindle with the chuck installed and backing off what would normally be the handle on the collet closer at the opposite end of the headstock shaft. There's no mention of any force applied to the backed-off handle. Did you give it a smack with your palm? The ta...

djjh87 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2023 2:34 pm Slow but steady progress on the tender around the humidity to open the doors.

???
Can you please help me understand what that means?

Thanks.

H

Good to see you on the board, Kap.

H

Thanks, all, for your comments. It has been an interesting and rewarding journey. I now have more confidence in casting iron. I'm giving some thought to making a model of an attractive steam engine. Horizontal or vertical, makes no difference to me, so long as it's pretty to look at. Something in th...

I have had many requests over the last several weeks for the small scales Little Engines blueprint books so I have decided to gear up to do another reprint of them they will be a set of three quarter inch scale half inch scale and 3/4 inch (I think this should be ¼" --H) scale the projected sa...

or wear cover all goggles over you regular glasses, which is what I do when grinding.... A very good idea, especially if the glasses are made of glass, not polycarbonate. Amazing how those tiny bits of hot metal from the wheel melt to the glass surface, yet are repelled by polycarbonate. I am not a...