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| vtsteam:
Thanks Mark. :beer: Well, Tom, I've got ferro silicon, but I ain't Ironman! I'd say it's his long experience, skill, and knowing his materials, his craft, and his own built tools so well. Plus a willingness to go against commonly held casting axioms. I see all of that in his videos, and the now lost website of his work that I came across nearly 20 years ago. :coffee: Today I concentrated on finishing all the little bits and fittings that the tailstock needs for completion. They were: turn, face and bore two brass thrust bearings, make two sliding ram clamp pieces (aluminum), add a stem to the cast brass oil dipper, and drill and tap the cast brass ram clamp handle. Everything complete today but not assembled yet, and no photos ready because parents in law came over at 5 for supper. Sorry! |
| vtsteam:
Well, today I figured I'd easily finish the tailstock assembly, and even tried using some of the new parts to drill a hole in a piece of stock held in the three jaw. But the hole came out angled. Something was off..... what could it be? Turns out that back when I bored the Morse taper in the tailstock ram, I had used a Morse lathe center as a test gauge. Nothing wrong with that. But it was of the short tail, mill style tools. When I tried to drill a hole today I used my Jacobs chuck mounted on a drill-press style Morse taper adapter. The type with a long flat tang at the far end. Turns out that this tang interfered at the back of the relieved portion of the tailstock ram. But only by a tiny amount, otherwise I would have noticed it. The interference was enough to prevent full seating of the shank in the taper, and so though I used a center drill to start the workpiece, the hole started at a slight angle and continued when I switched to a regular drill bit. Took a few minutes to discover the cause. Now I have to reassemble the old tailstock and then mount and bore out the back portion of the new ram. I can't just use a drill bit to do that because the diameter needs to be .525" and I don't have anything close to that. A wider bit would cut away a lot of the back of the Morse taper, and I'd prefer not to do that. I could simply grind off some of the tang of the Jacobs adapter. But then I'd always have to remember to do that for any other morse attachment -- and accept the likelihood that I'd forget and spoil some work down the road. Better to do it right..... |
| awemawson:
Can you cross drill the ram to form a morse taper ejection slot which also give space for the tang to fully seat? |
| vtsteam:
--- Quote from: awemawson on November 09, 2020, 03:05:58 PM ---Can you cross drill the ram to form a morse taper ejection slot which also give space for the tang to fully seat? --- End quote --- No need Andrew, The ram screw ejects the taper shank when the ram retracts. I just bored the ram clearance a little further in today with a bar, and that solved it. Actually only took a few minutes. Here are all of the pieces made for the tailstock -- completing that job today: |
| vtsteam:
The ram clamp pieces presented a slight problem but a little thought solved it with an easy solution The original two part clamp was tightened with a 1/4" dia. through bolt. The original bolt head must have been square, because there was a square recess in the bottom clamp piece to fit. This would have held the bolt against turning when the clamp lever-nut is turned at the top of the tailstock. However, somewhere in the life of my Craftsman lathe, someone must have replaced the original bolt with a hex head version, and that just barely caught on the edge of the square hole - still adequate for tightening the clamp, but not ideal. Thinking about it, I could probably have cast a hex head recess into a similar clamp piece using a bolt as a core (smoked to allow release), but that seemed like a lot of work for just one tiny item. Thinking around that problem I realized that I could just clamp the bolt head in my vise, and then saw off pieces parallel with the bolt. This would yield a Tee headed bolt. Then I could slot the clamp piece to fit. I thought about milling that slot, but that would require going down to the other storage shed, and setting up the mill (the mill vise had been removed for the las operation). But I realized I had hanging up in front of me a big coarse file, about a quarter inch thick, and the piece I needed to work on was aluminum. So a simple clamp-up in the bench vise, and a minute of vertical filing later, I had my slot, fitting the new Tee bolt, and I was done. Fun to make a complicated-looking machining job simple and solved in a few minutes by hand tools! I enjoy that kind of thing. |
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