What did you do today?

[Bented]

Annoying thin walled parts from 1/4 Sch. 80 stainless pipe, the drilling is awful due to the low material removal, it rips the edges right off of the drills at 60 FPM with HSS drills.
Turning, threading and parting is done at 250 FPM with carbide tooling, this could be done at much higher speeds.

Using an 8" 3 jaw chuck turns the coolant to mist at 2500 Rpm's which is a mess, a collet chuck does not cause this problem but for 200 parts it is not likely worth the time.

[Tom S]

I'm finally at the point where I can revert my Ames No3 from the production modifications that had been made at one point back to the way it would have left the factory in the 20's (guess on my part for the date).

Went from this:



To this:



The headstock has been rebuilt, I had to reverse engineer the hold down bolts since they had gone missing. Took a spacer out of the tailstock and adjusted a hold down from another tailstock to work with this one. Installed the correct cross slide. Next up is a new countershaft with flat belt pulleys.

[Beazld]

Made a chainsaw holder for my tractor. Looked on line and they go anywhere from $90-$250 (!) for one. I made it out of a $12 Walmart cutting board.

[Dave C]

Made a chainsaw holder for my tractor. Looked on line and they go anywhere from $90-$250 (!) for one. I made it out of a $12 Walmart cutting board.

Great idea! I need to make one for my Ford 641. The irony is, if you had gone to a plastics supplier, the material probably would have cost at least double what you paid for the cutting board.

[Beazld]

Great idea! I need to make one for my Ford 641. The irony is, if you had gone to a plastics supplier, the material probably would have cost at least double what you paid for the cutting board.

And the most amazing thing is the cutting board says made in USA!

[mattthemuppet]

nothing exciting, but replaced the battery in my laptop as it took a sudden turn for the worse and was starting to bulge. Only cost $35 and took about 5 minutes, battery life seems similar to the original 6 or so years ago. Here's the old one:

[wierdscience]

Finally got the top plate drilled and mounting to the linear slide I started making-

[nickel-city-fab]

Machined a backplate for my new 4-jaw. It isn't dialed in yet, but that isn't too important with independent jaws.

[Bruno Mueller]

I cleaned the street in front of my house. Actually, the tenants should do this monthly in turn. But apparently I'm the only one who does it. Three large buckets of dirt have come together. For today it is enough for me. Tomorrow is also another day and then it goes on.
To the great joy, there is no snow yet.

[DennisCA]

Repaired my snowblower (broken shear pins). I am starting to hate it. It's a Toro 828 LE. The fact that everything is in inches is a very minor irritant since I have an inch socket set. So it's not that.



Just the overall design of the stupid thing, whoever made it didn't think of making it easy to take apart (I just wasn't able to get at the impeller shear pin holes from the front). There are lots of questionable design choices IMO, using nuts and bolts instead of a screw and having the threads be in one of the mating parts, this is in particlar annoying when there are nuts located in places that are nigh impossible to reach, or requires further disassembly of some other part of the machine.

It really doesn't feel thought out. I wonder if Toro wants people to not repair their machines but buy a new one. I was originally looking for old Ariens or Gilson blowers because I felt these older machines where built to be easier to service.

[BWS]

Clear coated.... well actually it was a clear,flow coat;

Some motorcycle bodywork. I had cleared it a week and a 1/2 ago. So scuffed it,real good with 800/1000 then shot 2 more coats on. Been on a terror working on a stainless exhaust so took a break from fitting and Tigging.....

See if this pic works. Putting a minty Termignoni Ducati 996 exhaust on my 20 y.o. old BMW. Made the 4 into 1,utilizing factory primaries... from the collector it curves around and up to a 1 into 2 pantleg style Y. From there,it is Ducati... have to rearrange the pipes. This pic,I had just got the second leg going up.

Gotta get some bodywork "hung"... to start fabrication on some other bits N pieces.

[BWS]

Made this the other day,portable exhaust expander.

It's a 10T porta power. We use it for a 3 axis wheel straightening machine,and on a ho made,portable frame pulling rack. This is the "pull" cylinder that was sold separately. Found a home on the E wheel,H frame press. The 10T pump body is screwed to the lid of the stowage spot that has a bunch of E wheel stuff into it. An old pipe vise clamps it to a vert on the frame. The expanders(3) came from evilbay. I have an old Lisle from years ago. These are designed to be hit with an impact gun. My experience with it is,they suck. This hyd unit is like "butta"... works too easy.

I use the H press a lot.... E wheel not so much which is gonna change in '21. Getting a pnuematic planishing hammer as soon as finances allow.

I swage right many parts on the H press.... but for swaging ends of pipes the new expander is sweet. I wanted it portable to use on cars N trucks in place. Gonna work on the shop truck exhaust next.

[emery.dewitt]

Trying to improve this used Sherline milling machine I bought. It was mounted on a warped low-density fiberboard base that wobbled. I cut a couple of base pieces from square steel stock, welded in 3/8" nuts for the feet, and tapped 10-32 holes to mount the mill. Next, I'll add a stand on the back leg for the DRO, and then paint.

[J Tiers]

Drove 9 1/2 hours coming back from Minnesota. Discovered that the US mail is so fouled up that stuff sent a month ago has not arrived yet in some cases. Including payments on bills. Three dofferent entities screaming for money that was sent to them weeks ago.

I want to beat heck out of that moron in charge of the Post Office.

[DennisCA]

Well my car failed inspection (rust hole behind the rear passenger side wheel well) and the snowblower burst a drive belt the same day, expecting a big snowfall tonight. Hopefully I can find a suitable replacement belt in metric land, and this weekend it's mig welding time.