Shop Made Tools

[DICKEYBIRD]

Surface plate/stock storage cart with a removable wooden top/mount for a buffer. Buffer motor was rescued from a pool pump. Cart made from scrap pieces of 1/2" Sch 40 black pipe

[gary hart]

Years ago made some temporary long jaws for something, don't remember what for.
They worked so good for me that I've left them there. A small vertical vee in jaws has come in handy also.



Tool holders. Have several tools that has hunk of metal bolted to bottom so tool rests atop vise jaws but is held tight by hunk of metal bolted to it.
Have small block of wood with a magnet in it to hold spot welder up while tightening jaws.

[gary hart]

Some uses for table on vise besides holding coffee cup.




Mag base and Vise-Grip to hold things in place.




Fire brick atop vise jaws and dumb bird to hold parts.




Goofy and Charlie hold parts on table.

[gary hart]

Wore out chuck has gear about equal to diameter of chuck and shaft mounted to it. The shaft rides in bronze bushing inside of square tubing. Brass ears sticking out sides are in contact with bronze bushing and the brass ears make contact with vise. The brass ears to vise is ground path for welder. The 2 square tubes on top are there for the unit to rest on lower portion of moveable jaw when positioning for tightening in vise. This is mated to DC motor that has speed control. This plugs into a foot switch if needed. Besides for welding it is used as a rotisserie for painting as you just might guess.






Steel plate welded to short section of pipe. Pipe fits in vise in gap under the vise jaws and can be rotated to position wanted. Material is clamped to plate.



Old dental light really helps my welding. It really can make a difference for old eyes.

[gld]

vise handle

My contribution

Speed handle for my mill vise.

[Kibby]

Hey Gary, where did you find that dental light? Man, I would really love to have one of those!

[digr]

Belt grinder

This is a belt grinder I modified form plans that Bill pace posted. Plans and drawings can be found here.

[gary hart]

Hey Gary, where did you find that dental light? Man, I would really love to have one of those!

Craigslist and luck. Guy who did remodeling of dental offices was making room in a rental storage unit. Was lucky and got several cheap, gave two away and used the rest.

[gary hart]

Long handled chip brush with magnet on other end for getting into hard to reach spots. Thinking seen something like this first on this board awhile back.



On the lathe was cheap skate. Removed broken tape from tape measure and replaced with string for retracking drill chuck key. On lathe is your standard retractable key chain you would wear on your belt.

On small drill chuck a screwdriver type handle works good. Holder close to use and handle part is first to grab when using.



Tool post used to see in old Model Engineer magazines works good for holding those giant insert tools. Make shim to fit under tool to bring insert tip to lathe centerline. Tool holder is simple to make, add a spring to keep clamp up when changing tools.



Small bridge crane fabed from salvaged I-beam. About 11 foot by 11 foot travel, covers lathe and mill.

[gary hart]

Working on sharpening little drill bits. Would like to be able to make split points on small drill bits.

[gary hart]

Balancer, knife edge is single edge razor blade with metal clip on back removed. Circular base has bubble level in middle with 3 leveling legs.
Use the 1-2-3 blocks for really big things.






Copper rivet making, using copper electrical wire. Tool fits in bench vise and is spring loaded to open and has dowel pin guides for alignment. Insert wire in hole, clamp, cut to length and hit with punch to form head.



Ball turning using boring head. It is dated Jan 2001, made after seeing Sir John show his on this forum. Only differance is didn't add a handle. Milled hex on back and use same wrench that is used for the tool post to rotate the ball turner.
Never could figure out how to sharpen the cutting bit so silver brazed round insert on shank for the cutter.

[hornluv]

Gary Hart, I love those little work holding creatures. I'm constantly bending up little clips from bailing wire to hold onto parts that are getting silver soldered. Works OK but they tend to open up when heat is applied.

Here's a buffer that I made. The plate is 18x18x.500, the shaft is 1". It gives me all the clearance I need when buffing larger objects. I'm still working on a proper dust collector hood though.



Here's a plate I made up for my tailstock so I could use a dial indicator on it.



Here's a rack I made for my BXA sized tool holders. The rods are 1/4" in diameter and the sides are 1x1/4" with the mounting holes 16" on center so I can screw it into the studs. I've filled it up quite a bit more since I took this pic.



Here's my version of the carriage stop. I angled the indicator mount up so I could read it without bending over (as much anyway).

[terry_g]

Several years ago I purchased an old Southbend lathe, It came with no tooling. I made almost every thing for it. All the material came out of the scrap pile at work.

This is a rocker type tool holder I made. It works very well.
the rockers are tapered so they will not walk out of place.



Here is a follow rest I built.



This turret tool post uses shims underneath it to adjust for different size bits.



A simple carriage stop.



Terry

[terry_g]

Some more:

This steady was a slice off of a hydraulic cylinder.



A ball radius turning attachment.



A holder for a parting blade and a drill chuck. It works okay for light drilling and boring operations.





Terry

[clutch]

Made these when I was an apprentice. No cnc's back then.

I made them out of gage stock. It was a bitch to work with but it was worth it.

I'm pretty sure I had at least 100 hours into them including all the lathe time.

I made this one at a local community college. I was pursuing an industrial engineering technology program. They wanted us to make things so we would appreciate various technologies and also things like tolerances.



The commercial version is pictured for a comparison.

I used it for years at various places of employment and finally decided it was time to buy some Kant twists for work and bring my baby home where it can't get lost or stolen.

Clutch