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vtsteam:
Green mold off a villa...... sounds good! Nothing green here yet, except envy of Spanish villas.

I didn't make my prediction tonght, still more scraping to do, almost there. Tomorrow morning for sure..... knock on wood. Boy this makes me want to work in wood. I think patternmaking is going to be the immediately following prescribed relief from this.

I probably could have cut 2 days out by really scraping with a vengance at first instead of fiddling with high spots after the first cut. I forgot what it was like a dozen years ago. You don't need to baby it, and hitting spots is only for the endgame. Now I remember again -- I used to get pretty rough with it, once I learned the hard way that you can either spend a week, or a day on a carriage slide, depending on your uhhhhh panache.

Tomorrow for sure....... :whip:

awemawson:
Steve, how does steel scrape? I'd imagine it's quite a different proposition to cast iron.

dawesy:
I envy you (sort of) the bed of the Churchill needs doing really but I'm not sure where I'd find a 6' straight edge to do it. Also how would one go about the 'V' sections?
Think a reground might be better in my case
Good work on yours though. I guess it's one of those jobs you don't rush.

vtsteam:
Andrew, I plead ignorance -- I've only ever scraped steel and aluminum. All the ways and slides on the Gingery are steel.

In my imagination cast iron scrapes as nicely as it machines -- happily if grey, and past the skin. But I dunno for real.

Cast aluminum needs a low angle and can take longer than you expect, even though soft. It can chatter and dig.

Dawesy, I don't know how they scrape long beds and prismatic ways (I think that's what they're called) but there's probably a video or web page devoted to it somewhere now. I have the opposite problem -- a 4 foot straight edge in a 6 foot by 8 foot shop, and a 2 foot lathe. :)

Actually, I've switched to a 2 foot cast iron surface plate which is better all around, for this bed -- it does 2 rails at a time, and shows twist without checking with machinist level, etc. I just hope the plate is true -- I bought it at auction and it looks venerable in age. Ive tried switching the bed around to different orientations, and the marking seems consistent. But that isn't an absolute guarantee. I thought of testing the straightedge and plate against eachother, but things are too cramped to be able to do that now.

A 6 foot straightedge must be quite a massive object..... how did they do 10 foot lathes? 20 ft lathes? There must be a way, with shorter reference surfaces.

ps.....didn't someone here cut down a straight edge awhile back? And scrape a whole kit of reference tools......that cut would take a lot of courage.....

dawesy:
The bed weighs about 200-300kg so a surface plate is out
I suppose there must be a way but my be has wear in the centre so I'd imagine id need to do the whole thing to get it flat and accurate. Prismatic ways sounds better than 'pointy edges '

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