Thanks Pekka!
I agree about the usefulness of wood in metal working, once common, now largely forgotten. One use I put it to on my Gingery lathe was under the pillow blocks for the motor reduction jackshaft. Hardwood, once it gets a fair amount of oil on it, lasts well, is reasonable stable in varying humidity and even has been used for bearings, -- in boats, Lignum Vitae has in the past has been used for propellor shaft bearings. I've heard of hand turning type lathe's bearings made of wood, too.
But in my case it was used under pillow blocks to allow a small amount of adjustment for aligning the sleeve bearings. Wood can be compressed a little by the fastening bolts, and also acts like a spring washer to retain the bolt and nut. It's worked well on that lathe for 20 years.
Another use in the past by hobbyists was in making large bore drills for boring model cylinders on a lathe. Steel sheet metal, pointed and sharpened at the cutting end, did the actual cutting, but sandwiched around it was wood shaped like a cylinder, making up the body of the drill, and keeping the bore straight. Even today it would be hard to find a drill 2" in diameter to drill a cylinder from a cast rough bore, and extremely costly if you did. But one of those wood drills could be made up pretty easily. I'd like to try that some day.
Another use for wood in the metal shop is in cutting thin wall material like tubing on the bandsaw. Putting a block of wood in the vise next to piece to be cut reduces the descent rate of the saw, and supports the blade as it cuts, reducing the likelihood of tearing out teeth.
My boring table fixture needs one more operation -- I need to put a vee-notch in the bottom of the cross bars where they contact the cylinder, to give it a better grip. Well I also want to put a center drill hole down into the middle of the base Vee. This will allow aligning the jig with a center drill in the chuck of the drill press. If I clamp the jig down to the table while the bit is in the hole, the Vee will be centered, and any stock I put in the jig can then be drilled on-center, without center-finding.
I think I will get a lot of use out of this fixture.
Oh yes, I've decided to paint things other than on bearing surfaces. Thatt's the best rust preventative possible in my shop. Cleanly milled parts look great, but the reality in my shop (there's water on the floor at present because of the spring thaw) is that it will quickly rust, and I'm just tired of trying to battle it.
Blue was just a color I happened to have handy -- but probably black would have been better to match the lathe. Plus I shouldn't steal Bob's thunder -- I know he likes blue!
