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| Manxmodder:
Steve,you do realise that this machine could one day end up in be in a machinery museum collection somewhere. So,maybe we need to give it a name now so those looking at it in future know some of it's history. How does 'The Fletcher VT ladder lathe' sound ? :) Perhaps it should have a brass name plate attached with a Fletcher paw print included in the design. |
| vtsteam:
Holy cow, that's a lot of replies! Thanks boys, one and all!!! :beer: I don't have scrapers elbow, but I do have the scraper's blues :) Angle grinder :Doh: why didn't I think of that!!!!! (although, I do have to say that Bodger John's shaft finisher was pretty impressive.....) Bertie, the time just flies when yer having fun! Some people go to the gym, I just lift a small lathe ways back and forth from the plate to the bench, and the bench to the plate, scraping a microscopic amount of metal off each time. A couple days of that, and shoveling snow seems like a nice break! Norman, thanks buddy. I hope it does add something pleasant to read. Though it might get laughable yet because I haven't made the big screw up that is par for the course. My sig isn't there for nothing. I don't know if it's raw sienna -- it looks kind of like a sort of wax in a tin, that "orange" -- pretty transparent for artists colors -- very pale orange. And it goes on before the rub -- I'll have to find that video and post a link so you can see it. Sandpaper, Oz, well I'll tell ya........there's nothing wrong with filing during this stuff, even if you're scraping, as evidenced today. Okay, so that brings me to today. Remember I said I bought a piece of 3/8" x 1-1/2" x 27" hot rolled steel from Lester yesterday? Well today I painted some muriatic acid on it outside to take off the mill scale, but it was too cold work well, and it just did a partial job. I didn't have a container big enough to submerge it in either. So after a half hour of repainting it with the stuff and a large part of the scale gone, I rinsed it off and took it down to the big shop to mill one edge more or less flat, and brought it back to the tiny shop to scrape. The idea was to make a small straightedge that I could use on the sides and bottoms of the ways to check and/or scrape them. I have a big 4' straightedge, but it's way too big! So things were going swimmingly well -- it was nice to work with something light in weight, and that could be clamped in the vise. And sinc the edge was so narrow, it was really fast to scrape. But after getting ridof the initial hump in the middle and about 10 scrapes I wasn't making much progress. I tried scraping harder, but the blue just wouldn't move. That's when I broke out the big heavy rasp and laid the scraper down. Ysee I finally remembered that 2 days work didn't even remove a thousandth of an inch (at least for me and my HSS scraper), so if there was 2 thousandths to remove........well I could do the math. So, bottom line, don't feel committed to the scraper in moments like this, there's nothing wrong with filing the high part down if your blue isn't moving after some determined scrapes and trials. I find that with a nice big file, no handle, laid flat on the work I can actually feel the high areas becaus the file has more bight there -- it sticks. And a few minutes with the file really did the job. There was still scraping left to do. But not 4 days worth. I finished the straightedge this evening. It isn't pretty (yet).....but it's straight. It instantly let me find that the bend in the ways was really mainly in one of the pieces, not both. So I started on the worst edge to turn it into a reference for the others. That way I can measure the variation and know where to scrape them to. Again, I got only so far and then it slowed, so I broke out the file and went at it, removing several scraping days worth of material in a few minutes. By the end of the day I had my edge. So that's the lesson fo the day. There's no shame in filing on a scrape job. And also, don't put it off. Because if you go 10 scrapes and then file, you might as well have just done 1 scrape and then filed -- you're at the same point in the process either way. One might be a day quicker than the other! |
| Fergus OMore:
Always difficult to do 'long distance learning'. My experience WAS that hss scrapers were too poor and time consuming. I bought one from Greenwood Tools in the UK which had detachable solid carbide blades( a couple). One was honed to do as you are doing- flat work whilst the other was ground on a green grit into a hook and again, finished on a diamond wheel. Actually, the wheel came from a commercial spectacle frame supplier and was for shaping lens blanks. It had become worn and I got it cheaply. It's still o my Stent grinder. Not content, I salvaged a hollow leg from a pair of long pruning cutters to hold a piece of scrap carbide insert. Most carbides are too blunt in small lathes but the advent of 'diamond' pastes and cheap so called diamond wheels came in. There was a lot of ballyhoo about carbon( diamond) and steel but I have never had problems. What there was/ and perhaps is, is a write up in the Home Shop Machinist and Machinist Workshhop for General and my date is 22/11/2005. There are 3 pages, I still have 2! In the body of the comment is reference to Projects Book 4- which I haven't got. Quelle surprise-stand by your ropes and fenders- I've found FIVE pages- then it all got light headed. Probably, there is the opportunity to make up aluminium disks to take the various grades of paste. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My odd thoughts are unhappy about the safety aspect of Connelly's advice on making up pigments. Heaven knows what the Health and Safety People would make of it today. I recommended buying a couple of artists tubes but making it-Hell, No! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Again, 'Bob' one of my old mentors used to use 'soda water' or so he said when he scraped. I'll leave it at that ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have to wipe up the snots at the perhaps end of a bout of nasty 'flu' Waiting to take tests now Norman |
| vtsteam:
Well, Norman, I do appreciate that there are carbide and diamond for tools, but they hadn't yet descended upon the tiny shop from above, and a file, and old fashioned scraper and a bench stone were near to hand! I remember once long ago in tidewater Virginia, we hopeful boatbuilder youngsters had a visit from an old master builder for a talk and instruction. One guy somewhat in awe, asked him what the best wood to use for framing was, in his opinion. "Why, white oak," he said. " Oh," said the apprentice, looking terribly unhappy, "I have a thousand board feet of oak I just bought. But it's red oak!" "Well son, then that's the best wood to use for framing," said the old guy. |
| vtsteam:
A bit of a side excursion while I experimented with ideas for the electronic change gears, and I think I have enough of a proof of concept at this point. So I'm moving discussion here in this thread. It originally appeared in the "How Do I" forum under Elecronic Leadscrew thread. As it stands now I have a FORTH program running on an Arduino board that will divide spindle encoder pulses and produce stepper movements to drive a leadscrew. And the ratios have been worked out to suit my intended leadscrew pitch, the encoder, and the stepper motor at inch thread pitches. I do need to test it at speed with the ordered encoder, but otherwise it seems do-able and everything works when breadboarded. So back to the mechanical work on the lathe. |
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