Shop Made Tools

[dsquire]

Its all there - If you read it

Expedient! What's the base from?

Chris

Also re-purposed a worn out brake rotor.

Nice stand there Expedient. I like the adjustment knob.

Cheers

Don

[3illmesmart]

V Blocks

Not much, but I used to have our own heat treat setup at work and made these.

[bborr01]

Chuck Key for Lathe Chuck

A few years ago I bought an 18X40 lathe and it came with 3 and 4 jaw chucks.

I had used the 3 jaw a lot but one day I needed to use the 4 jaw. I mounted the chuck but when I went to tighten the jaws, the chuck key would not fit. It was a little too big. So I went in search of some stock to make a new chuck key with. After replacing a broken axle on my John Deere mower, I kept the old one in case I needed some round stock. Good thing I did.



The 5/8 rod next to the axle shaft is an old shaft that I got off from an old piece of farm machinery that was being scrapped. It doubles as the handle for a Dake arbor press that I resurrected from being a boat anchor. (for real)

I have not figured out what I will make with the rest of the axle shaft, but it is highly unlikely that it will see the scrap barrel except as chips from what will be left of it when I do figure out what to make from it. Not much gets wasted in my shop.

Brian

[wheeltapper]

Sub base for a bandsaw

Hi
I posted a pic of this in another thread on here and someone suggested I put it in here so here it is.
The idea originally came from Model Engineers Workshop, I just bent it to fit, so to speak.

heres the plate with some clamps,


It measures 6" x 4" x 3/8" and has 28 m10 holes. ( tapping them was fun)

here it's in position, my saw's maximum cut is 4" and after trimming the long edges parallel I put it in the saw vise and cut the end square with the blade.



And here it's set up to cut a block of steel lengthways, as you can see, I can get very close to the blade.


That's it really, very simple and very very useful.

Cheers
Roy

[bent metal]

Small tap wrenches made from 7/16 - 20 bolts. Hex head end is drilled for slip fit on 1/4" shaft and the hex rounded off.


Indexing around and using corner of end mill cut some "knurls" across the threads on the bolt.

How do you stamp numbers around a shaft like that?!?!

[BillDaCatt]

How do you stamp numbers around a shaft like that?!?!

I believe that he stated a few posts later that the numbers were not stamped but cut on a 4th axis CNC mill.

If you want to do something similar but only have access to stamps, mill a small flat area on the handle. If you have an indexer, you could even mill flats all the way around to add some uniformity to the look. Flat every 120 degrees will give a triangular pattern. Every 60 degrees will result in a hex pattern.

[DICKEYBIRD]

It's called a CNC stamper.

[vpt]

Couldn't a stamp be rolled onto a round somehow? Especially if it was aluminum. In the lathe maybe?

[daveo]

That is a slick idea! How are the taps held in?

[gary hart]

Held in with Loctite.
Too remove the tap, heat holder with propane torch to break the Loctite bond.

[bborr01]

Cheapskate Electricians Flashlight

Below is a flashlight that I made when I was an apprentice. An electrician asked me to make him one so I made an extra for me, which was fairly standard practice. It is made out of a industrial fuse. Drilled out to fit AA batteries. The bulb holder is a brass flare fitting. The switch is a piece of brazing rod. I found a spring that fit nice and snug on a lug that was in the end cap.

The electricians would keep them in their pants pocket with the brazing rod on the outside of their pants. That kept the brazing rod from touching the end cap and running the batteries dead. The red plastic thing is a cap from a 3/4" countersink that I put on the end when it was in my toolbox.

Brian

[Deus Machina]

Not a tool per se, but a great help. Also, the picture doesn't come out.
The front of my mill's table has a ruler on it. It won't stay accurate to .002", but it works just fine for quick jobs.
I lined up the indicator as accurately to the 0 mark as I can.
Lock the X axis there.
Put a nice even coat of layout dye on the top of the stationary jaw of my vice.
Install my spring center (usually to apply pressure to tap handles) into a collet.
Lower until spring center is compressing against top of vice jaw.
Advance Y axis until center springs off of jaw.
Voila, nice sharp line on the top of the vice jaw. Now all I have to do is run the indicator to the 0 mark at the table's front, extend the center layout line to the edge of the piece I'm working on, and can line that up to the one on the jaw to put me pretty darn close to dead center. I can either start there for non-critical dimensions or get out the edge finders and adjust from there.

[Deus Machina]

Next:
I got this whole bin from work when they were clearing out old hardware.



About two dozen bars of that Mysterium alloy. Not sure what kind of plating it is but it doesn't seem to rust. It also cuts like **** but they all have a hole already in one end that's the perfect size for my pegboard hooks.
So I just cut pieces to size, and thread the end. It does knurl easily, so I just consider them half-finished handles for custom tools.

More importantly are those plates. They're the panels off of a style of shelving endcaps that we no longer have. They have two 90-degree bends to hook them onto the endcap.

Or for me to drill a few holes in, throw in the vice, and hammer a ninety in the opposite direction.



They hang perfectly off the splash cover of my lathe. The back of them also has 'ears' that extend past, with holes already in the end, to make it easy to screw into my pegboard.

[TGriffin]

An interesting thread with lots of great project ideas!

Here's a graduated carriage stop that I made for my dad's Atlas lathe. I've since redesigned it, switching the graduations to the right side to make them easier to read and moving the guide pin for the spindle to the bottom where it and the slot in the spindle are out of site. I also made a set of drawings for it. The graduations were cut using a vertical mill as a slotter with the tool held in a chuck and fed with the quill, the graduations were hand stamped (with a makeshift guide).

Tom

[DATo]

Beautiful piece of work TGriffen. I like that elevated pad with the scribe mark. I'd be too lazy to do what it probably took to make it that way ... I would have probably SuperGlued it on *LOL* Nice job!!!