...when you just shouldn't be in the workshop...
A friend asked me to knock up a small piece out of aluminium - only 45mm long, 10mm for 10mm (drilled & tapped for M3), with the remaining length 3mm diameter, the last 10mm being screwcut for M3 again. OK, thinks I, that might be a bit of a challenge for my not-so-speedy lathe...
Well, I managed to turn a piece of scrap ally down to 10mm, drilled & tapped the end for M3 as requested. I then put the 10mm bit in my ER32 chuck.... and somehow managed to break it - the chuck, that is, not the work piece. I must have accidentally over-tightened it, because it all jammed up solid. I had to totally destroy the nut to get it out... and the threads on the chuck are damaged, so that's £30 quids worth of tool wrecked

Not to be defeated, I recalled seeing some "turning" work done in a CNC mill with the toolbits clamped to the table & the work in the spindle. Thinking this seemed like quite a crafty idea, I went for it. And it worked a treat, I got the required 35mm turned down to 3mm in relatively speaking, no time flat. Cut the excess off with some snips, and went to tidy the end up a bit on the grinder, bent the bloody 3mm bit.
Aaaargh!

Gave up. Today never happened...
