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bounce, yer money order will get lost in the mail and yer dog won't come home. click on our "Contact Us" icon above for the quickest response to your questions. HOW TO MAKE AN ADJUSTABLE BACKPLATE FOR LATHE CHUCKS HOW TO MAKE AN ADJUSTABLE BACKPLATE FOR LATHE CHUCKS HOW TO MAKE AN ADJUSTABLE BACKPLATE FOR LATHE CHUCKS HOW TO MAKE AN ADJUSTABLE BACKPLATE FOR LATHE CHUCKS HOW TO MAKE AN ADJUSTABLE BACKPLATE FOR LATHE CHUCKS HOW TO MAKE AN ADJUSTABLE BACKPLATE FOR LATHE CHUCKS HOW TO MAKE AN ADJUSTABLE BACKPLATE FOR LATHE CHUCKS HOW TO MAKE AN ADJUSTABLE BACKPLATE FOR LATHE CHUCKS Greater Precision for Scroll Chucks If you're a model engineer or a machinist then the magazine Projects In Metal is familiar to you. If not it should be. Projects In Metal is a spinoff of The Home Shop Machinist, the authority on machining and the like. This Featured Project from "Metalworking One" is just one of the 62 articles you'll find here from the magazine "Projects in Metal". Published in 1988 and 1989, these were the first years "Projects in Metal" went into circulation. Without a lack of articles on machining, "Projects in Metal" was launched in January 1988 and was met with immediate success. Scroll chucks are a boon to anyone who does lathe work. Although available in a wide variety of jaw configurations, the ubiquitous three-jaw self-centering chuck is the real workhorse of all scroll chucks. Easy setup and good gripping power are its traits. Flip some stock between its jaws, twirl a tee handle wrench, and start machining. No fuss, no muss, and reasonably accurate work centering have earned a good reputation for these chucks. But sometimes reasonably accurate work centering isn't enough. And if a lot of parts much be machined from the same size stock which is near its finished size, indicating in each piece with a dial indicator and a four-jaw independent chuck gets too old too soon. Grinding the chuck jaws can solve some problems, especially those relating to chuck jaw bearing surface wear. Fortunately, there's an additional step which will increase the accuracy and versatility of your chuck: indicate in the chuck for the size stock you will be using. Most scroll chucks, however, are not designed to be indicated in. They screw or lock on a lathe spindle and that's it. No fuss, no muss, and no adjustment. But never fear, adjustment is here - at least with some simple modifications to the backplate which adapts the chuck to the spindle. You're going to find entirely new articles published nowhere else but Projects in Metal. You haven't seen the projects, but you probably know the names. Harold Mason, Philip Duclos, Robert Hedin, Guy Lautard, Bill Davidson, Bob Washburn, Ed Dubosky, Dick Torgerson, Steve Acker, and Deene Johnson just to name a few. Here each author introduces their helpful and fun projects. Please! Before you say "What? another steam engine?," you should know that this one is somewhat different than "run of the mill" model engines. Its diminutive size is rather unusual, but how many engines have you seen that will operate on breath power? When properly constructed and lubricated, this one will! After you've built your little engine and let your friends have a go at it, it will, quite literally, leave them breathless! Hence the name "huff 'n puff." It's a dual action motor with a 1/4" bore and stoke and is capable of performing at extremely high speed. There are only 14 parts to machine, plus seven 0-80 screws to hold the motor together. This is by no means the smallest engine ever constructed; however, it is small enough to present a nice challenge. Remember, any reduction in the size of a motor increases the necessity for close tolerances and smooth finishes on all moving parts. You'll discover this to be a fascinating project! Machining involved generating tremendous pressures in highly concentrated areas. Anyone who has ever used a hammer and cold chisel to work some steel readily appreciates what is happening on a lathe while it peels away some of the diameter of a length of stock. The same is true of a shaper or mill or any other metal cutting machine as its cutter chomps through a workpiece. Even a hacksaw or bandsaw is, essentially, a metal removal tool. When something goes wrong things can go downhill very fast. In general, at least something (beside the machinist's attitude) probably will fail. If it is not something that is designed to fail, like an inexpensive shear pin, then Murphy's law takes over: whatever breaks will be the part that is most expensive or difficult to replace. On small lathes, once you get past broken tools, one of the most common places to observe shear strength is in lead screw components. Lead screw brackets, which absorb longitudinal thrust of the lead screw as it pushes along the carriage, can fracture. Half nuts can have their threads ripped out. Or lead screw drive gears can suffer sudden extractions of some of their teeth. The more philosophical among us may refer to this as quality control testing. The rest of us? Well, maybe that's better left unmentioned. Speaking of old lathes, my 12" Clausing lathe must be at least 40 years old. The bore through the headstock spindle is a dinky 3/4". Today's comparative lathes would have at least a 1 3/8" bore, hence no problem adapting 5-C collets to them. This method of using 5-C or even R-8 collets in an old lathe is relatively simple and easy to construct. I became so carried away I made two adapters, one for the 5-C collets and the other for R-8 collets. In use, a special threaded plug must be inserted into the back end of the 5-C collets; thus, one drawbar can be employed for either type of collet. Since the drawbar is a solid rod, the insertion of long workpieces through the spindle is impossible. However, "half of an apple is better than no apple at all" Over the years that I worked with plain change gear lathes, I became aware of how time consuming it is to tear down a gear train for feed, set up threading gears, tear them down, and set up feed gearing, only to tear it all down again or the next threading operation. Whatever size lathe one might have, when using collets it is desirable to be able to utilize the full bore diameter of the headstock spindle. The chuck described here was designed to achieve that and uses the popular and relatively inexpensive 5-C collets. The chuck consists of three major parts: the nose piece, or collet holder; the collet nut, internally threaded to mate with the thread on the collet and supported in the assembly by two ball races; and the backplate, which adapts the whole thing to fit your lathe and will dictate the final size of the collet chuck. For those with smaller lathes, the collet chuck diameter could be reduced in size to a more compact unit. I'm sure you'll find the chuck a pleasure to use because of the speed of chucking and unchucking. When you remove a part you're working on for some other operation and then rechuck it, you don't have to put a mark on it to align with number one jaw. It's nice to put a dial indicator on a part and read its surface texture rather than eccentricity. Repetitive threading in the lathe can take a lot of time. A large part of that time is spent bringing the cross slide bracket to zero at each pass. Recently I had to thread a short length on a quantity of shafts, so I made a lathe threading stop to speed up the job. Within this article I intend to show you how I have done this so you at home can do the same and save yourself some time. The best workshop ideas are the ones that solve more than one problem at a time, and this one worked so well that I've got to tell you about it. A project of mine that has been staggering along for a couple of years now, without getting anywhere in particular, is a 1/8 scale model of a British Atkinson truck. I began working the perspex material in order to make the tires for it, but the lathe speed could not be slowed down enough to work with the material. The lathe and the material gave out a sharp howl, even in the lowest gear setting. I was hopeless, for I had no idea as to what I should do. Then it hit me, I tried turning the machine by hand, and by gosh, the material did not whine, and it would still cut and form to my liking. What I'd been needing was a crank handle. In my early career, I was lucky enough to work with a terrific engineer called Bernard who ran a polyethylene bag factory. One of his favorite sayings was "any idiot can design a complex device; it's the man who designs a simple device to do the same job who's the real genius." So when I'm brainstorming I solution , I opt for the simplest design possible. The crank handle I had in mind had to be quick and easy to put on and take off. I don't know about you, but for me any lathe accessory that takes more tan a couple of seconds to fit or remove spends most of its time in the drawer. If you'd rather manage without it, I tell myself, you should get rid of it. Plus 22 more projects involving techniques and making lathe accessories. Improve Your Mill/Drill Machine An Untapped Source for Cast Iron Stock A Small Quick Change Tool Post Adjustable Pop-stop for a Myford Lathe A Ram Tailstock with a Long Lapped Hole After you've built this useful little hand vise, you will wonder how you ever got along without it. For the beginner, this is an excellent lathe and milling attachment project, but even the most accomplished machinist would enjoy the task, too, and all would find it to be a very handy addition to the shop. There are a few vises you could make using the basic techniques you learn through this project. Unlike most commercially built vises whose parts fit sloppily, these will have parts that fit closely together without excess play. You can make your vise from almost any available metal, such as mild steel, aluminum alloy, or brass. Aluminum alloy is easy to machine and takes a nice finish. Whatever metal you use, the screw should be made from steel. Most home shop machinists spend less time in their shops than they like. Family and job obligations put severe demands on valuable time. Since many of the projects a home shop machinist undertakes are quite time consuming, the pride of accomplishment that come from a completed project occurs rarely. The following is a description of a very simple project that can be completed in one evening, but yields a product that gives years of useful service. Every shop has needs for soft hammers of several different sizes. Good quality brass hammers are not easy to find at local hardware stores. If you are lucky to find one, you will usually pay a high price - around $10 depending on the size. Making a brass hammer is simple, but requires the use of your lathe, drill press, and/or milling machine. You can customize your hammer to suit your own needs and style it to match your personality. A lathe tool post grinder is an item that most of us won't use every day of the year - but it certainly comes in handy when you need it. How does the obnoxious price of $800 or $900 for a small size grinder grab you? Well, not wanting to deplete my pocketbook, I came up with this unorthodox grinder. It's inexpensive, easy to make, and you'll be forever freed of slipping belts and underpowered motors, traits all too common with tool post grinders. Best of all, this grinder can turn your vertical milling machine into a surface grinder. You'll need a heavy duty flexible shaft and a 3450 rpm electric motor of 1/4hp or more. It's possible to use a 1725 rpm motor by mounting it and a countershaft onto a wooden base;' utilize a 2-to-1 ratio of pulleys from the motor to the countershaft and thus attain the 3450 rpm. Remember too, that most flexible cables are designed to operate in a clockwise direction; make sure that you attach the proper end of the cable to a motor or countershaft that rotates clockwise. A Quick-Change Gearbox for the Atlas 6" Lathe The quick change gearbox shown in the photograph is probably the only one in existence for the Atlas 6" lathe. The idea of making the gearbox came after I saw the lathe on display in a showcase. The lathe appeared to be a fine [piece of machinery for its size and price, and I thought a quick-change gearbox would certainly enhance it utility and its looks as well. I began to study its detail geometry to see how a quick-change gearbox could be designed and built with no alteration to the lathe. This as my goal, I started by taking measurements of the lead screw relative to the bed and enough measurements in the area of the existing change gears to start a drawing board layout. The first problem was to select gear sizes to keep them within the confines of a housing (the box) so the gears would not interfere with the lathe bed. This was a particular problem since the lead screw is relatively closer to the bed than most lathes. Stock catalog change gears were too large, I therefore selected standard spur gears. For those readers who have a 6" Atlas or Craftsman lathe, you will see that the range of fine feeds is increased somewhat with this gearbox over what the standard change gears supplied will do - and so much easier. What a pleasure! The rotary table I built is not as flexible as a real rotary table. The table simply sits on the central pivot pin of the swivel base, so the table must be locked in place with two clamping screws before milling. One cannot turn the table while milling. However, the table is still suitable for a large class of rotary table work. The swivel base is graduated every 5 degrees, and a single witness mark on the table makes angular positioning easy. I've rounded the ends of linkages by clamping the table, taking a milling cut, turning the table ten degrees and reclamping, taking another milling cut, etc., through 180 degrees. While somewhat tedious, it's certainly better than nothing, and a slight touchup with a file of the resulting multifaceted linkage end produces a nicely blended curve. Making the table is generally straightforward. I'll outline the procedure I used; as always, there are many ways of doing the job. I used aluminum because I happened to find a piece of the right size sitting around at a scrapyard I visited. Aluminum is certainly a lot easier to work with than steel, and if you don't anticipate putting the rotary table to hard use, it should be perfectly adequate. If you're concerned about durability, steel might be a better choice. The best of both worlds might be to use aluminum with a steel bushing for the center pivot hole, held in place with Loctite. A Rocking, Swinging Grinder Table It all started when I was building the mini-drill attachment for my George Thomas Universal Pillar tool, and I needed an accurately ground lathe tool to make the vee-pulleys. Up to this point I had been using, I'm ashamed to say, a makeshift grinding setup on my wood turning lathe. The speed wasn't right, there was no proper table - let's forget it! The previous Christmas I was given a Spiralux drill grinding jig as a present, but trying to use it with the grinding arrangement just described was out of the question. So it lived in the tool cupboard. As sometimes happens, the solutions to all these problems came at once. I had spent months scouring the ads and the showrooms of importers of oriental workshop equipment, in the hope of finding a 6" double ended grinder of a type I could modify to suit my needs, and at the right price. Prices were creeping up, and what had once seemed attractive machines were now virtually out of my reach. I was about to despair when - BINGO! I found it! More than must a double-ended grinder, it had a coarse wheel on the left hand end of the spindle and a fine, white cup wheel on the right hand end. Perfect! Well - almost. The wheels were equipped with sheet steel guards and Plexiglas eyeshields, and the pressed steel grinding rest provided was fine for the left hand wheel. But the manufacturer had fixed the same kind of rest to the right hand wheel, so that only the edge of the stone could be used for safe grinding. There was no way of grinding on the face of the wheel without risking loss of fingers. Or worse! That was when the idea of the fully adjustable table hit me. But first - I had to fix the machine on a base and set it to the correct height for my Spiralux drill jig. Parallel arm scroll saws have become popular in recent years. They were in use one hundred years ago in the foot powered variety. These photos and drawings show how to make a motor powered saw using metal and wood construction. The saw has a three quarter inch stroke and uses standard five inch blades. The construction and assembly of the saw is fully described, but there are differences between the prototype and the drawings. The motor drive, blade chucks, and blade fixture have been changed. Because the motor shown is not readily available, a shaft has been substituted for the drank drive. By extending the base, a motor can be mounted under the armbracket. In the question and answer department of The Home Shop Machinist magazine, a gentleman named Jim Narinell described how he'd worked with belts and pulley to reduce the speed on a woodworking band saw in order to do metal cutting. I, too, played with such a design and put it aside until I read expert Rudy Kouhoupt's suggestion: gearing. I had a Sears three wheel wood band saw and an old two speed motor from a washer. Calculations showed that a twenty to one reduction would give the correct slow speed for cutting steel, and the higher speed would be somewhat slow but workable for cutting aluminum. After checking the prices for new speed reducers and then searching the junkyards with no luck, it was time to make one. Anyway, making something is always more fun. A compact arrangement with the motor and saw that I had indicated a small reducer could be made using a simple worm and gear set of left hand twelve pitch tooth design. With this three wheel band saw and its new drive system, the unit is now a compact bench-type tool. It looks nice, is lightweight, and really cuts metals. Most shops can use a belt sander, It can be used for deburring, surface finishing and squaring up stock and so will replace a milling machine for some operations. The sander is easy to build as the major parts are made of particle board. The belt drive is a pulley mounted directly on the motor shaft and a small tightener pulley on a spring loaded arm. A one sixth horsepower motor is large enough to power the sander. In my crowded shop, a twin arbor grinder provides the grinding facilities I need in a minimum of space. It has various advantages, includes several useful features, and has some interesting construction challenges, I doubt that anyone would want to duplicate it exactly, but other may find something they can use in its design. The twin arbor, single motor design was adopted for compactness. Some might want to prefer two single arbor machines, although the twin arbor design does save a motor. The machine is mounted on a turntable on top of its cabinet in a corner of the shop, The most accessible position. This is a very convenient mounting - one I could employ for other small machines. The heart of any grinding machine is the arbor, and any number of fine designs can be found. Go on, you know you want to make it! A Scale Model 32-Pounder Seacoast Cannon Let me guide you through the construction of a 1/2"=1' scale model of a 32-pounder (pdr) Casemate Cannon on a front pintle casemate carriage. The model in a couple of the photos was built for the National Park Service, to be displayed in the Museum at Ford Pickins. Cannons of this type were in service at Ford Pickins during the Civil War. The Ordnance Manual of 1841 lists this casemate carriage as the Model 1839. Another photo shows a similar 32-pdr cannon at Ford Pulaski, Georgia. These carriages were also used with cannons other than the 32-pdr. The tube and other machined parts are made from round stock. Mild steel, aluminum alloy, or brass are suitable. Go out and have fun with this thing, gentlemen! Surface Grinding on a Vertical Mill Add an Improved Downfeed Scale Modifications to Mill/Drill Attachments A Supplementary Tilting Milling Table A Double-ended Dial Indicator Adapter The Presentation Swarf Collector Make A Quickie Hardness Tester Any one of these projects is worth the small cost of the book! If you're just learning about machining or you're an old pro this book has the information you need and it belongs in your head. Now's your chance to get ahead - don't miss it! 8-1/2 X 11" Hardcover, 251 pages, profusely illustrated with photographs and working drawings. Visit my MarketplaceAdvisor Gallery! Power Tools for Power Sellers! Phone: (***) 744-4449 M-F 9:00 to 4:00 Pacific Standard Time This item has been seen by alt people! 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