What did you do today?

[Bruno Mueller]

I have set up a new assembly workstation in my office. Basis are two cabinets from the Swedish furniture dealer. I got the beech worktop from the hardware store. After everything was installed, two DIN A1 cutting mats were placed on the top of the worktop.

[swatkins]

I spent the last three days trying to straighten a PTO shaft for my bush hog... At least I had fun doing it

[redlee]

I have set up a new assembly workstation in my office. Basis are two cabinets from the Swedish furniture dealer. I got the beech worktop from the hardware store. After everything was installed, two DIN A1 cutting mats were placed on the top of the worktop.

Can you share some info on the little precision drill press on the nice bench ?

[J Tiers]

The small garden pond out back has been not filling all the way. So the first thing was to discover and fix the holes torn in the EPDM liner by raccoons as the get out of the pond after trying for fish. Got a Goodyear kit for fixing EPDM, and that did the triick

Next the edge at one end, where there is a concrete reinforcement under the EPDM and padding, seems to have sunk, so I had to use some topping vinyl type concrete to bring that up about 20mm or so to get it even all around.

Had to get that done before the remnants of the hurricane get here and rain on us.

[Mcgyver]

Its the GHT UPT , a classic home shop project - George Thomas's Universal Pillar Tool. The UPT is a drill, staking tool, tapping tool, etc

[swatkins]

I started working on a new gate for the place.... With all the unrest the Wife wants the whole 9 yards... Gate, operator, access control, cameras and even has the nerve to want it painted!

I usually have fab shop roll a ring and cut a decorative plate for the middle of these type gates but I decided to see if I could make it happen with the tools at hand, instead of building a ring roller....

[AD5MB]

assembled a Walmart mountain bike. mountain bike in the same sense that a Yugo is a sports car. naturally, the proverbial one part missing and one extra part. naturally, the one missing part was crucial. faked it with the extra spacer and a fender washer.

[J Tiers]

Its the GHT UPT , a classic home shop project - George Thomas's Universal Pillar Tool. The UPT is a drill, staking tool, tapping tool, etc

Dumb question.... how actually useful is it to you? I mean not "could be" but actually "use it every day" kind of useful. (I think you have one)

I figured it was extra cool and quite a number of years ago I was figuring to make one. Then, I decided I would see just how much I would use one, so I sort of kept track of all the times I would like to use one, leaving out the cases where the work would not fit.

I rapidly came to the conclusion that I really would not use it that much, probably less use time that the time it would take to make one, so I didn't make one. And I was going to convert an existing tool to it, so a lot of it would be already done.

What I found was that I had other ways to do everything it did aside from the staking, and I did not have a lot of staking to do. If I did more watch and clock work, maybe so, but then I'd rather have a more purpose-made staking setup. The other stuff, I had covered, and I already have a small drill press that was actually what I wanted to convert to a UPT.

[DennisCA]

Reshaping this, ugly smithing hammer into something lighter and prettier. Slow going with my small belt grinder though, wish my 2x72 was done... I am considering heating up the head in the forge now and letting it cool slowly to soften it so I can machine it on the mill instead. Then reharden and temper. I got it down from 1500g to 1390g but I want to reach 1100-1200g weight.

[PStechPaul]

What about drilling lightening holes? A hammer should not really be hardened to a great degree.

[nickel-city-fab]

Reshaping this, ugly smithing hammer into something lighter and prettier. Slow going with my small belt grinder though, wish my 2x72 was done... I am considering heating up the head in the forge now and letting it cool slowly to soften it so I can machine it on the mill instead. Then reharden and temper. I got it down from 1500g to 1390g but I want to reach 1100-1200g weight.
]

1100g is my favorite weight! Been using that weight for years now. What is really hard to find sometimes is a decent straight peen. Most are too "fat" in the peen. You're making it look beautiful.

[The Metal Butcher]

What about drilling lightening holes? A hammer should not really be hardened to a great degree.

What??

[DennisCA]

I don't want any holes in this, and hammer hardening is a topic of debate from what I have seen in smithing circles.

Some like a soft hammer (saves the anvil if you miss), some like a hardened one (is more efficient). One can always control the amount of hardening by tempering until it reaches the hardness you like.

[Cenedd]

Had the day off with my son today as part of the school holidays. He was supposed to be making a bird feeder for Cubs (younger Scouts in case it's called something different elsewhere) and the instructions involved getting an empty plastic bottle. Yeah, I think we can manage better than that! So I drew up a 3D plan in Fusion in the quiet spots of worktime yesterday. We now have two Delrin discs ready to have some wire mesh slotted into them. Only issue was that I chose a large threaded cap for the top - larger than any tap I have...but it needed to be able to have peanuts poured into it. We've got the bore done but it dawned on me then that I'd really need the male threaded part to offer up to know when it fits. So I reluctantly took it out the chuck and started on the cap which is in alu.
Some of the figures I'd got from t'internet turned out to be a little off and I ended up getting the wires out when I hit the bottom of my undercut but clearly hadn't finished the thread. Wires are imperial with a metric conversion sheet. Go look at Machinerys Handbook for the thread specs it said. Ha, I laughed...I've actually got one of those now! So I duly thumbed through it and the metric threads on offer are M24 and then M27. Obviously the idiot designer had picked an M25 thread as it fitted in the hole I could have gone with the formulae...but, and I'll be honest here, I really couldn't be bothered. So back to Google and some swearing at juggling three wires and a mic later and we have a thread.

Top of the cap is knurled. Bented I found a great lubricant for knurling. The bristles off the acid brush...and half the stem of the brush too. Must have been good because I managed to feed it another couple of brushes There was some restrained colourful language! I think I'll work out some way of dripping it on instead of a brush next time! I also suspect that 30mm diameter may have been at the limits of what this clamp-style knurler could manage. I'll definitely be taking the knurled (there's an irony there somewhere) nut off the clamp and running it through the mill until it has a nice hex shape I can stick a socket on - or a spanner but I think a socket will give me the clearance. This should mean I can stop trying to make it tighter by infeeding the cross-slide....which seems to result in the QCTP rotating slightly. On the plus side, no wheels exploded so I'm calling it a win!

[Bented]

Top of the cap is knurled. Bented I found a great lubricant for knurling. The bristles off the acid brush...and half the stem of the brush too. Must have been good

You had enough sense to let go of the brush, right?