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| Rear Tool Post for my Cowells Lathe |
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| raynerd:
I appreciate there isn`too much involved in making this but after a bin full of scrap recently, I needed something for my confidence! I decided to make a rear tool post for my cowells and do a decent job of it. These are £40 to buy from Cowells. A kind chap on the yahoo group provided dimensions, I purchased a piece of 25mm square steel bar, slotted it and made a start! Faced all the sides square, mainly to make it look nice! Got a decent finish but my machine vibrates too much and still leaves little hair marks. Nothing much to it I know, but took my time and it looks nice! Next thing was a tnut, 1/2inch wide but with something like only a 2 mm height at the sides. Was a little tricky but I seemed to get a decent finish again, rightly or wrongly with the big facemill. I could have just locked it all down with a nut but I choose to make a handle. It unlocks and locks back on quicker than my qctp on my boxford! I must admit I want a qctp for the cowells and rather than trying to making one, I'm strongly considering just making lots of square tool holders with a similar lock down handle. I wanted to give it a nice finish so tried to blue it. I've blue small pieces of steel before for clock and watch projects but nothing this big (still tiny I know!). Heated it with a blow torch and dunked it in car oil when it looked about right. I think in hindsight I left it a couple of seconds too long so I lost a little of the real deep blue but it still looks a good colour. Hard for my camera to pick out.... Then looking good on my cowells! Just need to buy a standard hss parting tool. I got one of those small one with a parting blade and it doesn't sit properly and sticks out the back too far! |
| Stilldrillin:
By 'ek Chris! :bugeye: That looks proper professional. Well done! :clap: I might have a small, blade type parting tool, which will fit. If I can find it........ :scratch: David D |
| andyf:
Nice job, Chris. Good idea about the QCTPs, too. Though shims might need to be adjusted when tools are sharpened, it hardly seems worth involving yourself with dovetails and height adjusters when you can get away with simple blocks which don't need much metal. They would probably be more rigid than dovetails and clamps on such a small scale, anyway. Andy |
| Rob.Wilson:
Now that turned out well Chris , good to see you took the time to chamfer the job :thumbup: Your bluing looks spot on . Rob |
| Meldonmech:
Cool job Chris, good finish and fits in well with the rest of the machine. Cheers David |
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