Shop Made Tools

[gdavis2265]

[dian]

is the drive wheel crowned or just the idler? it seem you are running the belt pretty slow. why?

[gdavis2265]

is the drive wheel crowned or just the idler? it seem you are running the belt pretty slow. why?

Both are crowned - As for speed, I think I designed it to run at the recommended speed for alum oxide belts (4200 sfpm???????) - can't remember.

I've been using it for about a year or so now and seems to work great.

I mainly use it for general purpose fab and works great - I build maybe one to two knifes a year, so having it at the proper speed is not much an issue for me.

[gdavis2265]

is the drive wheel crowned or just the idler? it seem you are running the belt pretty slow. why?

I see that I designed it for about 4800 sfpm, isn't that about the correct speed for AO?

[metalmole]

How hard are the knifes you make from the RR spikes, a friend told me that they didn't have enough carbon to get them to 58 ??

My Brother is the one that collected a bucket full of railroad spikes for me, so I thought it was fitting that I would make a knife out of one for him. It was great to see the look on his face this year when he opened his present.

[gdavis2265]

How hard are the knifes you make from the RR spikes, a friend told me that they didn't have enough carbon to get them to 58 ??

I heard they were not as hard as tool steels, but they make great general purpose bush type knifes, also, a file won't touch them, so they are good enough for me. I'm more serious with fab work, so knifes for me are more a novelty.

[metalmole]

Cool, if a file will skate on them they are indeed hard enough for a do all blade....I work with 1084 and 440c...

[gdavis2265]

Cool, if a file will skate on them they are indeed hard enough for a do all blade....I work with 1084 and 440c...

Yup, I built quite a few and a file always skates right across them.

[dian]

I see that I designed it for about 4800 sfpm, isn't that about the correct speed for AO?

i thought it was slower. the recomended speeds seem to be between 3600 and 6300 sfmp. so your pretty good. does the belt never slip on the drive wheel? i am asking, because i see a lot of rubberised wheels.

[gdavis2265]

no slippage whatsoever, even under heavy loading.

[BobH]

How hard are the knifes you make from the RR spikes, a friend told me that they didn't have enough carbon to get them to 58 ??

Not all spikes are created equal. The ones used near switches and other high stress areas have a higher carbon content. The top the heads have the raised letters, strangely enough, "HC". Used ones may be faint from the pounding but its there.

[gdavis2265]

Not all spikes are created equal. The ones used near switches and other high stress areas have a higher carbon content. The top the heads have the raised letters, strangely enough, "HC". Used ones may be faint from the pounding but its there.

Thanks for the info Bob, I'll check my bucket of spikes for the markings.

[gdavis2265]

Just some different drills - sorta homemade tools

[J Tiers]

Hardly qualifies as a "tool", but it is useful anyhow....

When you have any spindle tooling that does not go into the spindle taper, the taper tends to collect a bunch of swarf, and requires to be cleaned out before use for a center, or whatever. And, now that I put the vertical head back on the Lewis mill, I was getting swarf into that spindle also. Time to act.

I thought of several things, a cork, a screw-on cap (probably the best idea, actually) etc., but finally just did this... a piece cut from a sponge, and pushed into the taper.

a 1" diameter works for an MT-3 taper, so I use a 1 inch "arch punch" to cut it, but a sharpened bit of tube will cut a nice round, or even just a square of sponge material cut out and pushed in will work.





The reason for it.... you can see the cutter is well placed to toss chips right into the horizontal spindle.


It works quite well to keep chips out of the lathe spindle as well, when boring something held in the chuck, for instance.

And a clean one is pretty good at cleaning the spindle out of crud if pushed through from the back end of the spindle.

[_Paul_]

Hardly qualifies as a "tool", but it is useful anyhow....

When you have any spindle tooling that does not go into the spindle taper, the taper tends to collect a bunch of swarf, and requires to be cleaned out before use for a center, or whatever. And, now that I put the vertical head back on the Lewis mill, I was getting swarf into that spindle also. Time to act.

I thought of several things, a cork, a screw-on cap (probably the best idea, actually) etc., but finally just did this... a piece cut from a sponge, and pushed into the taper.

a 1" diameter works for an MT-3 taper, so I use a 1 inch "arch punch" to cut it, but a sharpened bit of tube will cut a nice round, or even just a square of sponge material cut out and pushed in will work.

And a clean one is pretty good at cleaning the spindle out of crud if pushed through from the back end of the spindle.

It's an invaluable peice of kit I have a bit of random shape sponge stuffed into the MT3 spindle of my 1953 Boxford lathe, if I forget to put it back in which i do on occasion and then blow swarf out of the chuck using the airline I have to spend the next half hour cleaning chips off all the backgears