Warning .... this may turn into a rant , and it really doesn't have anything to do with bullet casting .
So lets start with why ... I have a spindle failing on my lawnmower deck . I've rigged it up just to get by for awhile but it isn't going to last and a new spindle is pretty near $400
So I am going to make a new one . But .... isn't there always a but ?
To make it I need to be able to cut left hand threads , something my Chinese lathe won't do .
But ( there it is again ) if I add a gear to my drive train I can make it happen . If I use two gears I can make a nice fancy idler set up and make things even fancier and be able to go from forward to reverse without having to set up the gear each time .
But. ( yet again ) two store bought gears are going to be $78 after shipping .
So I tell myself ... screw that I didn't buy machine tools to spend money on store bought junk ! I'll make my own gosh darn gears and really stick it to the man ! .... yea
After two hours with machinery's handbook and eating twelve Advil
From the math headache
I've sort of slussed out how to make a cutter .
Four hours later I've got a cutter 75% finished . I made it from 01 tool steel . It still needs hardened and then finished ground to sharpen it.
So now I have a cutter , danged if I don't need someway to hold it on the mill . An hour and a half later I have a mostly finished arbor .
It still needs a key way cut ... I'll do that when I set up the dividing head again .
Speaking of dividing heads .... I also needed an arbor to hold the the gear blank when I cut the gear . The arbor I used for the cutter is to big for the blank fyi.
So about an hour and a half later I had another arbor almost done .
It still needs the clamping nut turned into a hex or a square for a wrench !
Oh yea ... I also need a blank for a gear . So bored and turned a blank from acetal plastic for a test before I put two more hours in the cutter .
Let's review ... so far I am about 10 hours into an effort to save $78
And will easily have another 4-5 hours just in making two gears .
Makes a lot of sense doesn't it .
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