In my build thread for the Four Truck Shay I mentioned making some tooling. Well here's what it involves.
My Bridgeport has a Kwik Change spindle. The picture below shows the tooling. The tool holder is on the left. On the right is a blank that I will attempt to turn into a tool holder for a boring head (yet to be made).

In order to mill the ears on the blank I will need to use my rotary table. Problem is the slots in the table will not take the T nuts that go into the Bridgeport table. I had made some T nuts but had threaded them for 5/16-24 for some reason or other. Now I need to fasten my small three jaw chuck down. So I needed some longer threaded rod. None to be had at the hardware store. What to do? Well I'll use the nuts I made and make some extentions. This is what I came up with. They're not done yet. Still need to drill and tap the top of the rods.

So what am I leading up to? Well I made a tool holder that will hold a 5/8" Dia. end mill since I don't have a collet bigger than 1/2" for the Kwik Change tooling. I made an adapter to fit into the 1/2" tool holder. I started to use the mill and tool holder to start milling the truck journal boxes. I had a samll "crash" didn't hurt the mill or part but bent the holder so that it wobbles. You won't see it in the picture, it's that small of a bend.

As you can see that quite a bit of the tooling sticks out from the holder.

I determined the reason it bent was that the 1/2" part was to short for the collet. The collet must had let go casung the mill to twist. The picture below shows the anatomy of the holder.

So as soon as the finace dept. finds a couple of extra bucks laying around I will purchase another piece of 3" leaded (12L11?) I'm going to make a solid tool tool holder for the Kwik Change spindle. Until then the Shay has to wait.
Bernd