What did you do today?

[Cleve C. Dixon]

I know what you mean, sometimes we have to use a rake😄

[ChazzC]

Cenedd

No need to spend the £ (or $ if you use PayPal): you just needed to single-point & harden a 6-32 die (and tap while you had the change gears setup) to add to your tool collection.

[Cenedd]

ChazC I'm pretty sure I have one somewhere* - the tap, at least. For a metric-only 'shop I have a surprising collection of imperial taps for one-off jobs: BSPP, UNC, UNF. The issue is that I'd need to produce quite a number of them, try to turn the heads to match the button heads on another part (aesthetics are important here), make the rotary broach that even Dan hasn't gotten round to yet, and then paint all the heads black. All this is technically possible.....but, I'll be honest, I couldn't be bothered. Reward vs effort and all that; sometimes you just want to buy a bag of the things off the shelf and get on with it.
I'm also trying to keep the spending down on this one too; use what I already have, re-use things etc. That's not going well so far!

*It predates my workshop so I'm trying to work out quite where I might have thought was a good place to store it!

[wierdscience]

Don't hold your breath lol. I'd have to finish the rotary broach project that's been sitting on my desk for about 8 years first lol

Wait, you have projects like that too?? I got a CNC plasma table build that's heading for a multi-decade time frame

[ChazzC]

Cenedd

I fully understand: I'll often do a cost/benefit analysis (including opportunity cost) and then purchase something I could have made so I can have a starting point for modifications (making it better?).

I think I might have mentioned that I label everything now to avoid buying multiples? It really gets annoying when a year after you gave up looking and bought something that you find it while looking for something else, in a place it shouldn't have been. As a colleague once said, "It's always in the last place you look."

[rubes]

Cenedd
"It's always in the last place you look."

I always say "it's right where you left it"

[Cenedd]

I always say "it's right where you left it"

Nah, these things wander off and hide; ask anyone on here!
I find they don't wait a year to be re-found. Usually it's just after the replacement arrives - just to really rub it in!

M4 screws turned up this morning and are already fitted. Gives me the opportunity to fail to get round to the next steps this weekend!

Tried out my fire extinguisher air receiver for pumping up car tyres. Turns out that one fill is enough to take a tyre from 20 psi back up to 32 psi (there's one with a very slow leak) and then another fill is enough to check and top off all the others. I'd hoped for more but I'll take that. Next life, an airline port at the front of the house....or a double garage

Made Espresso Martinis. It's the weekend

[rubes]

Nah, these things wander off and hide; ask anyone on here!
I find they don't wait a year to be re-found. Usually it's just after the replacement arrives - just to really rub it in!

haha...yeah, I kind of know that too...and have been bitten by it many many times...and after I buy the replacement, and find the original...I then remember that that is in fact right where I put it...hahaha

[ChazzC]

Completed phase 2 of migrating to my new MacBook: since it will be another two weeks until my ThunderBolt 4 dock ships I got a USB-C hub so I can use the second monitor (and backup drives, real keyboard & mouse - much better for CAD work - and hard-wired internet connection:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09DXB1F8C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Works very well (I did have several exchanges with the Seller to confirm that it would do what I needed) and will go in my travel bag once the dock has been received & installed.

The MBP is now my wife's and her old MBA will be for our grandson when he's with us.

[Tillie's in a bottle]

Finally completed this repair of the crossfeed shaft on the Reid grinder. I broke the bearing adjusting nut and ground off the threads on the bronze shaft...
I turned down the damaged section of threads, brazed on some silicon bronze with O/A and chased new threads over it to meet the undamaged threads. I also made a new nut.
It was a major learning experience to say the least. but that's the fun part. One of the pictures is of some test pieces I made when learning to chase a thread.
having good quality bronze filler really helped. I had some rods that I got at the River weld website, and they were a lot stiffer than what I got from my LWS. The new filler flowed a lot better and made for really almost no voids in the main section that got threaded- where the nut will actually sit.

[wierdscience]

Spade drill in action drilling 6" MDS filled Nylon-

https://youtu.be/PVM8vsjBhnU

[vpt]

Like dejavu. Loading up the mill using the hoist in the old shop.

[BCRider]

I worked on something MUCH smaller than VPT's mill above. A week or so back I started a thread about how I flipped around my spindexer. And mentioned that I needed it for a new auto feed gear for my shaper. So tonight I got back to this little project and here's the result.... It's just shy of 1AM so it'll wait until tomorrow to be taken out of the collet and put back in the lathe to turn or file away the burrs and to cut off the stub for the collet.

And yep, the shaper is making it's own replacement part. A bigger diameter 40T cog vs the stock 20T. The goal being to cut the .008 minimum step over in half. The bigger diameter also means making a new shorter plunger or modifying the old one. I'll be doing a new one so I don't mess up the original parts.

To keep track of the steps I did up a spread sheet using auto fill to do a column of increasing numbers in steps of 9 for 40 times. Just to avoid any addition errors.

[Stu]

Receiver hitch snugger upper. Having my receiver hitch rattle around while towing is giant pain in the arse, so I made this to snug it up. Works a treat.

[eKretz]

Reconditioned my secondhand Heinrich vise, it was pretty brutalized.



Also buttoned up my lathe DRO install. Mill is next.