Too much work!

[Newtire]

That's one of the first things they have you make at San Jose City College machining class. It's all about doing things in the correct order.

[grumpy one]

I used to have problems squaring up various things, usually metal, and became fairly proficient with a file over the years, but it's slow and sometimes it takes a few tries. My power hacksaw (a fairly big reciprocating one) is not all that consistent, as you'd expect considering how far it extends from the pivot-bearing that controls where it is pointing horizontally, and the requirement to have exactly equal set on every tooth on both sides of the blade, if it is going to cut truly vertically without running off. If it really matters there's always the mill, but that is pretty slow, and cutters are expensive. For nearly all of the routine jobs, I square the surfaces on a 14 inch disc sander. Once I'd set up the table square to the disc (a milling job, but I only had to do it once), I can square up most things in a few seconds. The only skill involved is stopping before you get the job hot enough to burn your fingers.

I made the disk sander out of an old 12 inch double-ended pedestal grinder, which was so old it was worthless. After the vintage electric motor died I fitted a modern one, of only 1.5 horsepower (it needed more power when it was a grinder, but I find 1.5 enough, since the whole process is limited by the job getting hot and burning my fingers). Most of the time I use 36 grit abrasive, but I keep some 80 grit disks for finer finishing.

[floodgate]

Newtire; Grumpy:

If you've got a decent 4-jaw chuck and your lathe runs reasonably true (especially the cross-feed), you can turn out a nice cube pretty quickly. Clamp any old which-a-way and face off; reverse and seat the just-cut face flat on the chuck body and cut the opposite face; clamp these faces tightly between two opposite jaws and just solid with the other two and turn the outer face; reverse and ditto; then grip all four trued faces and face the next two in turn. Should be good to 0.001" over an inch or two.

floodgate

[Four Fingers of Death]

been there, done that. My very first mill project at tech school. I got mine to within .0006 before I called it "good nuff".

How'd you go with the bowhunting on the Marlin forum Dan? I'm away from home and looked for it the other night, but couldn't find it. Mick.

[grumpy one]

Doug, I agree you can make fairly accurate cubes in a lathe, so long as they aren't too big. Depending on dimensions it is probably somewhat more time consuming than making them in the mill, though (unless I just happen to have the right sized four jaw chuck already on the lathe, or have something set up in the mill that I don't want to disturb). To make a cube out of something roughly cubical on the disk sander, I just push the start button and push each face in turn against the disk. If there isn't a whole lot to take off it's just a few seconds per face, and I end up with a smooth surface with no machining marks.

I even use the disk sander for things like de-scaling, de-burring, checking flatness, dressing welds, and especially, for profiling the convex edges of things cut out of plate (any thickness up to a couple of inches or so). Since I built the disk I don't use the bench grinder for anything but tool-sharpening, and almost never use the filing machine. Making shapes out of plate (which I seem to need to do pretty often) I mark it out, cut it out with the filing machine set up as a jigsaw (I don't own a bandsaw, because I'm too cheap to buy blades), then make the convex curves smooth in just a few seconds on the disk sander. The concave curves still call for hand-filing unless the job is big enough to bother to set up the filing machine.

[floodgate]

grumpy:

"Depending on dimensions it is probably somewhat more time consuming than making them in the mill, though."

Agreed, but my Smithy is usually set up in "lathe" mode, and isn't all that convenient as a mill. I have a 12" disc sander on a separate variable-speed powerstand (with a half-dozen backup plates loaded with variuous grits) left over from several years' dalliance with a Shopsmith (the woodworker's equivalent of the Smithy), and it IS the most used power tool in my shop. I've converted a LOT of metal into powder with it over the years!

Doug

[KTN]

Here's few pictures of my work,that has kept me from casting and shooting this summer.Unfortunately,my work has nothing to do with boolit casting or mold making,but it does have some good moments along the way.Like today,when I "cleaned" my workplace from all those sheet lead pieces that have collected during the year (guess who is doing all the lead work around here ).Now that winter is coming,construction work will slow down and I will have more time for boolit casting and mold making,I hope .
Oh well,only 25-30 years till my retirement ,maybe then I can really start casting and shooting.


Kaj