Lathe Hack and old school tool use. - Page 10

Worth1 · October 2, 2016

I bought an 18 inch stainless ruler at Home Depot it is a good ruler made from good steel.
One day I wanted to measure off a 90 degree edge and to my dismay I realized the folks didn't put the starting line at the edge.
This makes it worthless to me.
So today I am meticulously fixing it, I ground the end down to so far and am stoning it to the last amount and keeping it square at the same time.
This takes awhile as the steel is rock hard.
You cant do this with any old cheap stone.

After fooling with it for a bit it is square I checked it with the height gauge and it is reading within 0.002 of accuracy when the tip falls in the slot checking several times.
Not bad for a ruler calibrated by hand and an India stone.

Here is a sketch showing how I kept it square using the side of the counter as a stoning guide.
Worth
ruler.jpg

Worth1 · October 2, 2016

I have been racking my brain off and on trying to figure out a way to check my tail stock alignment without going the expensive test bar route.
There are several ways to do it but I don't have the stuff to even make it accurate enough of the right size.

I was just standing there thinking and it dawned on me just how much trouble these folks were going through that is something really simple.
You dont have to have one long bar or two of anything.
Here is what I did.
I took off the chuck and put in my MT 5 to MT 3 taper adapter and put in the live center that goes in the tail stock.
This thing has a nice clean machined surface on it.
Then I took the dial indicator set it up and zeroed it on the surface of the center and locked the cross slide so it wouldn't move.
I then put a mark on the top of the center.
The center was taken out and flipped over so the mark would be on the bottom.
This way I am referencing off the same side of the center.
I moved the carriage to the other end of the lathe and checked it.
There is less than 0.0005 misalignment of the tail stock you could call it dead on.
I repeated this process four times and got the same reading every time.
There is no way that I know of that this could be done anymore accurately than this.
I did check the run out of the center on the head stock and it is around 0.0005.
Which isn't bad at all considering I have seen what is supposed to be highly accurate collets that are far worse than this.

Sort of thinking outside the box but I am referencing from exactly the same point and not depending on some expensive ground rod and the accuracy of another lathe.
Here are true readings that I got several times it isn't a fake.

People dream of alignment this good.
And yes the tail stock is locked down the way I always do as if it matters.
I tested it too and no matter how tight I get it, it wont move the dial indicator.
Worth
20161002_121115.jpg

20161002_121320.jpg

Worth1 · October 2, 2016

About the above post.
If I am missing something here please let me know because if I am I have no problem being told.
I want to add I checked the same way on the back side too just in case.
Worth

Worth1 · October 4, 2016

I have no idea who is looking at the babble I put up here but the views keep going up.
If could be non members for all I know but I will continue to post observations ideas and projects as they come along.
who knows it might help someone.
Today is observations and babble.
First one of the guys I look at on YouTube has an old Rutland lathe he is redoing.
This person is my age and he has been doing it for years and does it for a living.
He makes a lot of his own tooling.
Well any who this lathe has a cross slide lead screw with 8 treads per inch pitch and lead.
What this means is every rotation of the handle is 0.125 of an inch.
This lathe was made in Asia for years but it was sold under different names.
Who in their right mind would make a late with this type of lead screw on a cross slide handle when it should be 10 threads per inch.
I ran across something like this a few years ago and it baffled me to no end because I had to start thinking in fractions not decimals.

A few days ago I noticed the cross slid was a wee bit hard to turn on a full stroke so I completely took it off and cleaned it the gibs lead screw lead nut and the dovetail ways.
Put it back together and it works like a champ.
Fitly inside.
Did the same thing to the top slide too.
Amazing what can end up in this stuff.

Now for the last thing.
My table saw.
I am going to go out and count the treads on the adjustment rods and see what they are.
Well I did something else instead I set the height gauge up and checked the saw that way.
Each rotation of the hand wheel is .100 so the treads are 10 threads per inch.
Fantastic now all I have to do is make an adjustable dial for the hand wheel and I wont have to measuer the darn blade height anymore when I move it up and down.
This will be great for cutting rabbits and dados.
3/4 of an inch is .750 so 7 1/2 rotations is 3/4 of an inch 3/8 is .375 would be 3 3/4 turns and so on.
Very accurate this way.
Now I need to figure out the miter adjustment and make a wheel dial for it.

Failure here too after more testing read below.

Worth

Worth1 · October 4, 2016

Well that blows after several trials and taking up backlash and so on it comes out to about 29.5 turns to get from a 90 degree angle to a 45 degree angle on the saw blade.
Not even for sure it is exactly that.
Too darn bad it isn't a complete 30 turns that would have been easy as 45 divided by 30 is 1.5 on the 10 thread per inch lead screw.
Instead it is 1.5254.

Here is the deal the height adjustment on the saw has a worm wheel and a worm drive.
The pitch on the worm drive has to be .100.

To do this with an angle inside the saw with the adjusting rod and nut you could go about it in several ways.
One, make the distance from the pivot to the nut a wee bit closer.
This would be very hard as any deviation in tolerance would toss it out the window.
Two, make the tread pitch correct.
Again any deviation in the pitch or lead would add up at every turn it would have to be exact and adjustable to zero it in.
Three, make another worm drive and worm wheel or a reduction gear and pinion.
Total redesign of the saw.

Four, make the dial and a chart showing the reading converted to the angle.
Too much trouble for the return.
Five and what I use is very accurate angle gauge blocks.
I tried the digital magnet thing and the tolerances were worse than my blocks.

Worth

Worth1 · October 4, 2016

Well the saw height thing is a bust too, since it is on a worm I got to questioning it.
After several revolutions of the wheel it started to change ever so slightly and multiplied big time.
Total bust on that one too.

There is absolutely no reason they cant design this stuff to be able to do this.
Accuracy is just as important in wood working as it is in anything else.
Worth

Fusion_power · October 4, 2016

Worth, you are fighting a mathematical impossibility. The sine of an angle determines the amount of rotation required for either blade height or blade angle. Sines are kind of funny in that they give different amounts of change in height for different amounts of angular rotation. The formula to calculate what you need is E = Emax * (sine of Theta) where theta is the angle desired.

The way it could be beat is to use a pair of centered worm gears with one at right angles running on the trunnion to adjust blade angle and another very similar to the way it currently works, to raise blade height. There are two very specific triangles that would have to be designed into the arbor and trunnion. It could be done by anyone who really wanted to improve the tablesaw. I think the improvement would be in the scope of what the Biesemeyer fence did for adjusting rip size.

Worth1 · October 4, 2016

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

Worth, you are fighting a mathematical impossibility. The sine of an angle determines the amount of rotation required for either blade height or blade angle. Sines are kind of funny in that they give different amounts of change in height for different amounts of angular rotation. The formula to calculate what you need is E = Emax * (sine of Theta) where theta is the angle desired.

The way it could be beat is to use a pair of centered worm gears with one at right angles running on the trunnion to adjust blade angle and another very similar to the way it currently works, to raise blade height. There are two very specific triangles that would have to be designed into the arbor and trunnion. It could be done by anyone who really wanted to improve the tablesaw. I think the improvement would be in the scope of what the Biesemeyer fence did for adjusting rip size.

No kidding.

But at least now all I have to do is just use the height gauge and be done with it anyway.
As for the setting of the angle on the saw I just use the very accurate incra miter gauge and cut angle blocks as needed.
I was using the Biesemeyer fence about two or three years after it came out on the market.
This was in the wood shop where I set up and ran that $40,000 German made molder plus a bunch of other stuff.
I owe a lot to that old guy he taught me a lot but mostly set me in the right direction to learn on my own.
One of the things we hacked was to have two adapter bushings made to run the molder heads on one of the big shapers.

Worth

Worth1 · October 5, 2016

I found what they calmed to be a CNC table panel saw on line for something like 24,000.
It still had a regular look at me and move guess miter gauge on it but the saw tilt rip fence and height was so called CNC.
I really wouldn't call it CNC.
You would spend more time punching in numbers than it would take for a good operator to just set the darn thing and make the cut.

Here is their advertisement.
https://youtu.be/IlrVlVAUs8w

greenthumbomaha · October 5, 2016

Well Worth, the count is going up as it is me. Sorry to dissapoint. I'm trying to educate myself so I have an idea of the terminology and limitations about my future bathroom/closet door and kitchen project, but it is way wayy over my head. The real estate market is so hot here finding someone with experience to work on smaller projects is near impossible.

- Lisa

Susan66 · October 6, 2016

Hi Worth,
Like Lisa, I'm putting your count up trying to learn more about these machines. We have a little equipment, most of which belonged to my Dad. He was like you, a little. Had held a number of jobs in his lifetime, starting with picture framing when he was 16, learning to be, first a truck mechanic, then an airplane mechanic when he was in the army in WWII. In the 50's he had a job as a tool and die maker for a while, before going to work in construction doing concrete on all different size construction jobs for maybe the next 25 years, with a two year hiatus in the early years somewhere in there working at the steel plant. He could make or repair just about anything- kept all this old equipment running. When a part broke on the snow blower, he made a new one because the manufacturer quit making parts for that model. Then thought about it and went out and bought a new blower anyway.
No way am I about to get up on one of the old tractors and start using the farm equipment- besides, my nephew can do that. But I can, and do some rough carpentry, enough to build raised beds or painting storage racks. My own experience has been more in the small woodworking area- carving and checkering gunstocks. I couldn't inlet a stock-never learned that, but I have tools. Your threads on old school tool use, while above my head, are interesting, and I like your style. You don't talk down to us ignorant folks.
I suspect there are others who are interested, and check in to learn something new.
My sister and I would probably have sold the old farm equipment, but our brothers said keep it, so we are. Meanwhile, we're storing it all. At least my nephew took one of the tractors, and the brush hog and finish mower, but he runs them around a couple of times a year, and keeps some of the vegetation down a little for us, so that works. We don't try to use the ride around mowers-just cut back on the amount of lawn we mow to handle it with a push mower. Maybe some day we'll get it back under control. Or just be living in the woods as the trees take over.
Anyhow, to get back to the subject at hand, I'm trying to safely use some of what's around here to do some of the projects that suggest themselves. Your threads like this one on tool use are helpful.
So thanks!
Susan

Worth1 · October 6, 2016

I got an old friend back today.

An LS Starrrett clamp I have had for years these things are expensive and I have no idea where I picked it up but I sure didn't pay the 50 some odd dollars it costs.
The thing is tiny.
Here is what happened I was using the welder and some sparks flew over and laded on the threads and ruined them.
These threads are .025 apart and the are #5 40 TPI threads the diameter of the screw is .120 or about 1/8th inch.

If this stupid move wasn't bad enough I got a tap and die set to clean up the threads.
Well the die is adjustable and I turned the adjustment screw the wrong way and it snapped.
Another stupid move on my part.

Sometimes you just have to walk away and that is what I did.

So here I am with a messed up clamp and a broken die to fix it with.
Well much later I decided to try and fix the die what have I got to lose it is already broke.
Today I did just that.
It is high speed steel and you can get the temperature up a lot hotter than regular steel before it ruins it.

So I took my time and welded the thing back together with the TIG welder.
At no time did the cutting part even change color.
It had to be lined up perfectly and by darn I did it.
I dont care if it breaks later on it has served its purpose and fixed my
threads.

Worth

20161006_145925.jpg

20161006_154003.jpg

loulac · October 7, 2016

Let the guy who never made a single mistake throw the first stone at you...

Worth1 · October 9, 2016

When I get around to it I am going to make an MT 3 to JT 3 taper adapter so I can use my bigger chuck from my drill press in the lathe.
Why do people buy this things when they have the machine that makes them?

Fusion_power · October 10, 2016

I read a story in a book one time about a newly graduated and hired mechanical engineer who was given a task to procure a bearing. The newbie promptly sat down at his desk, designed the correct bearing with proper race, temperature characteristics, diameter, etc. He sent it off to their in-house manufacturing group to make the bearing. Less than an hour later, the manufacturing supervisor came up to see him to tell him their equipment was not designed to mill bearing grade steel to the tolerances required and that he would have to re-do the specs with something they could make. He then re-worked the specs making it a bit blockier, just a tad wider and otherwise up to snuff so manufacturing could build it. His manager then came over and asked to look at the plans and asked him how much he estimated it would cost to make in-house. The newbie estimated maybe $300. The manager then pulled up a suppliers webpage and in less than a minute found a comparable bearing in stock and available for $7.50. Moral of the story: Don't re-invent the wheel unless the economics support doing so.

October 2, 2016	#137
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	I have been racking my brain off and on trying to figure out a way to check my tail stock alignment without going the expensive test bar route. There are several ways to do it but I don't have the stuff to even make it accurate enough of the right size. I was just standing there thinking and it dawned on me just how much trouble these folks were going through that is something really simple. You dont have to have one long bar or two of anything. Here is what I did. I took off the chuck and put in my MT 5 to MT 3 taper adapter and put in the live center that goes in the tail stock. This thing has a nice clean machined surface on it. Then I took the dial indicator set it up and zeroed it on the surface of the center and locked the cross slide so it wouldn't move. I then put a mark on the top of the center. The center was taken out and flipped over so the mark would be on the bottom. This way I am referencing off the same side of the center. I moved the carriage to the other end of the lathe and checked it. There is less than 0.0005 misalignment of the tail stock you could call it dead on. I repeated this process four times and got the same reading every time. There is no way that I know of that this could be done anymore accurately than this. I did check the run out of the center on the head stock and it is around 0.0005. Which isn't bad at all considering I have seen what is supposed to be highly accurate collets that are far worse than this. Sort of thinking outside the box but I am referencing from exactly the same point and not depending on some expensive ground rod and the accuracy of another lathe. Here are true readings that I got several times it isn't a fake. People dream of alignment this good. And yes the tail stock is locked down the way I always do as if it matters. I tested it too and no matter how tight I get it, it wont move the dial indicator. Worth 20161002_121115.jpg 20161002_121320.jpg Last edited by Worth1; October 2, 2016 at 01:45 PM.

October 4, 2016	#139
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	I have no idea who is looking at the babble I put up here but the views keep going up. If could be non members for all I know but I will continue to post observations ideas and projects as they come along. who knows it might help someone. Today is observations and babble. First one of the guys I look at on YouTube has an old Rutland lathe he is redoing. This person is my age and he has been doing it for years and does it for a living. He makes a lot of his own tooling. Well any who this lathe has a cross slide lead screw with 8 treads per inch pitch and lead. What this means is every rotation of the handle is 0.125 of an inch. This lathe was made in Asia for years but it was sold under different names. Who in their right mind would make a late with this type of lead screw on a cross slide handle when it should be 10 threads per inch. I ran across something like this a few years ago and it baffled me to no end because I had to start thinking in fractions not decimals. A few days ago I noticed the cross slid was a wee bit hard to turn on a full stroke so I completely took it off and cleaned it the gibs lead screw lead nut and the dovetail ways. Put it back together and it works like a champ. Fitly inside. Did the same thing to the top slide too. Amazing what can end up in this stuff. Now for the last thing. My table saw. I am going to go out and count the treads on the adjustment rods and see what they are. Well I did something else instead I set the height gauge up and checked the saw that way. Each rotation of the hand wheel is .100 so the treads are 10 threads per inch. Fantastic now all I have to do is make an adjustable dial for the hand wheel and I wont have to measuer the darn blade height anymore when I move it up and down. This will be great for cutting rabbits and dados. 3/4 of an inch is .750 so 7 1/2 rotations is 3/4 of an inch 3/8 is .375 would be 3 3/4 turns and so on. Very accurate this way. Now I need to figure out the miter adjustment and make a wheel dial for it. Failure here too after more testing read below. Worth Last edited by Worth1; October 4, 2016 at 06:39 PM.

October 4, 2016	#142
Fusion_power Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Alabama Posts: 2,250	Worth, you are fighting a mathematical impossibility. The sine of an angle determines the amount of rotation required for either blade height or blade angle. Sines are kind of funny in that they give different amounts of change in height for different amounts of angular rotation. The formula to calculate what you need is E = Emax * (sine of Theta) where theta is the angle desired. The way it could be beat is to use a pair of centered worm gears with one at right angles running on the trunnion to adjust blade angle and another very similar to the way it currently works, to raise blade height. There are two very specific triangles that would have to be designed into the arbor and trunnion. It could be done by anyone who really wanted to improve the tablesaw. I think the improvement would be in the scope of what the Biesemeyer fence did for adjusting rip size. Last edited by Fusion_power; October 4, 2016 at 08:15 PM.

October 2, 2016	#136
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	I bought an 18 inch stainless ruler at Home Depot it is a good ruler made from good steel. One day I wanted to measure off a 90 degree edge and to my dismay I realized the folks didn't put the starting line at the edge. This makes it worthless to me. So today I am meticulously fixing it, I ground the end down to so far and am stoning it to the last amount and keeping it square at the same time. This takes awhile as the steel is rock hard. You cant do this with any old cheap stone. After fooling with it for a bit it is square I checked it with the height gauge and it is reading within 0.002 of accuracy when the tip falls in the slot checking several times. Not bad for a ruler calibrated by hand and an India stone. Here is a sketch showing how I kept it square using the side of the counter as a stoning guide. Worth ruler.jpg

October 2, 2016	#138
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	About the above post. If I am missing something here please let me know because if I am I have no problem being told. I want to add I checked the same way on the back side too just in case. Worth

October 4, 2016	#140
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	Well that blows after several trials and taking up backlash and so on it comes out to about 29.5 turns to get from a 90 degree angle to a 45 degree angle on the saw blade. Not even for sure it is exactly that. Too darn bad it isn't a complete 30 turns that would have been easy as 45 divided by 30 is 1.5 on the 10 thread per inch lead screw. Instead it is 1.5254. Here is the deal the height adjustment on the saw has a worm wheel and a worm drive. The pitch on the worm drive has to be .100. To do this with an angle inside the saw with the adjusting rod and nut you could go about it in several ways. One, make the distance from the pivot to the nut a wee bit closer. This would be very hard as any deviation in tolerance would toss it out the window. Two, make the tread pitch correct. Again any deviation in the pitch or lead would add up at every turn it would have to be exact and adjustable to zero it in. Three, make another worm drive and worm wheel or a reduction gear and pinion. Total redesign of the saw. Four, make the dial and a chart showing the reading converted to the angle. Too much trouble for the return. Five and what I use is very accurate angle gauge blocks. I tried the digital magnet thing and the tolerances were worse than my blocks. Worth

October 4, 2016	#141
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	Well the saw height thing is a bust too, since it is on a worm I got to questioning it. After several revolutions of the wheel it started to change ever so slightly and multiplied big time. Total bust on that one too. There is absolutely no reason they cant design this stuff to be able to do this. Accuracy is just as important in wood working as it is in anything else. Worth

October 5, 2016	#144
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	I found what they calmed to be a CNC table panel saw on line for something like 24,000. It still had a regular look at me and move guess miter gauge on it but the saw tilt rip fence and height was so called CNC. I really wouldn't call it CNC. You would spend more time punching in numbers than it would take for a good operator to just set the darn thing and make the cut. Here is their advertisement. https://youtu.be/IlrVlVAUs8w

October 5, 2016	#145
greenthumbomaha Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Omaha Zone 5 Posts: 2,514	Well Worth, the count is going up as it is me. Sorry to dissapoint. I'm trying to educate myself so I have an idea of the terminology and limitations about my future bathroom/closet door and kitchen project, but it is way wayy over my head. The real estate market is so hot here finding someone with experience to work on smaller projects is near impossible. - Lisa

October 6, 2016	#146
Susan66 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Apr 2016 Location: Western NY Posts: 133	Hi Worth, Like Lisa, I'm putting your count up trying to learn more about these machines. We have a little equipment, most of which belonged to my Dad. He was like you, a little. Had held a number of jobs in his lifetime, starting with picture framing when he was 16, learning to be, first a truck mechanic, then an airplane mechanic when he was in the army in WWII. In the 50's he had a job as a tool and die maker for a while, before going to work in construction doing concrete on all different size construction jobs for maybe the next 25 years, with a two year hiatus in the early years somewhere in there working at the steel plant. He could make or repair just about anything- kept all this old equipment running. When a part broke on the snow blower, he made a new one because the manufacturer quit making parts for that model. Then thought about it and went out and bought a new blower anyway. No way am I about to get up on one of the old tractors and start using the farm equipment- besides, my nephew can do that. But I can, and do some rough carpentry, enough to build raised beds or painting storage racks. My own experience has been more in the small woodworking area- carving and checkering gunstocks. I couldn't inlet a stock-never learned that, but I have tools. Your threads on old school tool use, while above my head, are interesting, and I like your style. You don't talk down to us ignorant folks. I suspect there are others who are interested, and check in to learn something new. My sister and I would probably have sold the old farm equipment, but our brothers said keep it, so we are. Meanwhile, we're storing it all. At least my nephew took one of the tractors, and the brush hog and finish mower, but he runs them around a couple of times a year, and keeps some of the vegetation down a little for us, so that works. We don't try to use the ride around mowers-just cut back on the amount of lawn we mow to handle it with a push mower. Maybe some day we'll get it back under control. Or just be living in the woods as the trees take over. Anyhow, to get back to the subject at hand, I'm trying to safely use some of what's around here to do some of the projects that suggest themselves. Your threads like this one on tool use are helpful. So thanks! Susan

October 6, 2016	#147
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	I got an old friend back today. An LS Starrrett clamp I have had for years these things are expensive and I have no idea where I picked it up but I sure didn't pay the 50 some odd dollars it costs. The thing is tiny. Here is what happened I was using the welder and some sparks flew over and laded on the threads and ruined them. These threads are .025 apart and the are #5 40 TPI threads the diameter of the screw is .120 or about 1/8th inch. If this stupid move wasn't bad enough I got a tap and die set to clean up the threads. Well the die is adjustable and I turned the adjustment screw the wrong way and it snapped. Another stupid move on my part. Sometimes you just have to walk away and that is what I did. So here I am with a messed up clamp and a broken die to fix it with. Well much later I decided to try and fix the die what have I got to lose it is already broke. Today I did just that. It is high speed steel and you can get the temperature up a lot hotter than regular steel before it ruins it. So I took my time and welded the thing back together with the TIG welder. At no time did the cutting part even change color. It had to be lined up perfectly and by darn I did it. I dont care if it breaks later on it has served its purpose and fixed my threads. Worth 20161006_145925.jpg 20161006_154003.jpg

October 7, 2016	#148
loulac Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2013 Location: France Posts: 554	Let the guy who never made a single mistake throw the first stone at you...

October 9, 2016	#149
Worth1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Den of Drunken Fools Posts: 38,539	When I get around to it I am going to make an MT 3 to JT 3 taper adapter so I can use my bigger chuck from my drill press in the lathe. Why do people buy this things when they have the machine that makes them?

October 10, 2016	#150
Fusion_power Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Alabama Posts: 2,250	I read a story in a book one time about a newly graduated and hired mechanical engineer who was given a task to procure a bearing. The newbie promptly sat down at his desk, designed the correct bearing with proper race, temperature characteristics, diameter, etc. He sent it off to their in-house manufacturing group to make the bearing. Less than an hour later, the manufacturing supervisor came up to see him to tell him their equipment was not designed to mill bearing grade steel to the tolerances required and that he would have to re-do the specs with something they could make. He then re-worked the specs making it a bit blockier, just a tad wider and otherwise up to snuff so manufacturing could build it. His manager then came over and asked to look at the plans and asked him how much he estimated it would cost to make in-house. The newbie estimated maybe $300. The manager then pulled up a suppliers webpage and in less than a minute found a comparable bearing in stock and available for $7.50. Moral of the story: Don't re-invent the wheel unless the economics support doing so.