Search results

Mass helps. Everything on a light lathe is a sound-board. A general help might be to mount the lathe on a solid length of square tubing filled with concrete.

Protection with wooden covers gives you a nice additional workspace. I use two surface plates of about 500x500 mm. The cast iron one is more expensive and less precise than the granite one. Small mishaps cause indents to the granite so don't affect precision much, but cast iron has the...

As a matter of fact my old leaky very noisy compressor gave me such a fright every time it kicked in that it caused several rejects by my involuntary movements. The new one is low noise, and yes, the dog also appreciates it.

Thank you for your kind words. I'm not really into fluffy slippers, but every time when my dog seeks another spot from which to watch my doings she will accumulate a rich mix of chips, dust and oil and thus clean part of the floor. Normally my wife requests a clean dog in the house itself, but...

Fifteen years ago I painted the heated 40 m2 of my concrete shop floor with the cheapest possible outdoor concrete paint in 50/50 mix of green and grey. It has stood the test of time very well. It is easy to clean inclusive the generous amounts of oil that drip off my on 50 - 80 year old...

The time of calculating by slide rule and drawing on vellum is definitely gone for a good many reasons. However working with a slide rule gives you an ingrained feel for order of magnitude and caused me to memorize for many years the tables of 1-20 to the powers 2, 3 and 4. Nowadays I'm happy to...

Talking about minilathes and excellence in precision don't forget the all-American Levin lathes 9 1/2 " between centers, available from about $ 20.000,-upwards. Their 1938 book 'Practical Benchwork for Horologists' for watchmakers, instrumentmakers and machinists has something of a cult status...

Thank you; I appreciate the effort to educate a simple engineer!

Which Budhistic principles are being demonstrated with this wonderful toy that has no obvious purpose whatsoever? Ever in a severe gale the windmill can not hope to move the waterworks. And the waterworks pump the water around to and fro the same basin with hardly any lift.

One of our members is a retired shop manager of Nicholson. He teached us to treat files with the respect due to precision tools. Never throw them in a box or drawer but store them - after cleaning - with the cutting surfaces protected. A nice variation from Vallorbe is a set of files to use as...

Hi Ajoeiam, it is a Dutch inland oak of about 200 years old, probably planted at the time of erecting the farmhouse. It grew weak and now threatened the farmhouse. It yielded 1 ton of nice planks of 12 feet long, 20 inches wide and 1 1/2 inch thick and 1 ton of firewood. Nice material for...

Beyond repair I'm afraid.

Looking down at 15 degrees from the horizontal seems to hold your head and spine in a position that you can hold for quite some time without getting stretched or tired. This goes both for standing up and sitting down. Most machinetools and work desks do not comply with this simple rule. The...

As any woodwork starts with wood, I prepared last autumn for the coming work. Please disregard any advertisements or language, the little movie is self-explaining:

My headstock has screw-on chucks that are secured with a setscrew. I have put a little brass tip at the end of the setscrew. It does the same work as the earlier mentioned aluminum or soft solder, but stands the test of time better as a chuck has to be changed rather often.

Living with chaos is a key human survival skill, nothing wrong with it. If a slumbering autistic attitude starts bothering you, you might try to bring others into your shop. Works wonders. My mess started dissolving when I joined the local horological society - where we have a well organized...

No harm in trying. I would definitively use a diamond dressing rod to sharpen it up on a regular basis. I'm not so sure about the finishing qualities of an 80 grit wheel; my Extra Fine Diamond wheel is 1200 grit.

Some of my colleagues have switched to CBN for really all their grinding. Initially expensive but a very long service life. Fits on your regular bench top grinder. I adhere myself to the rule of thumb soft stones (white Alu oxide or green Silicium carbide) for hard materials and hard stones...

Maybe my first question should have been why normalize at all? You would expect steel to be delivered in a normalized state.

Funny enough the recommendations for treatment of C45 seem to differ across the Atlantic. From your attachment I understand a recommended normalizing temperature of 870 - 920 C. Here in The Netherlands the specification is 840 - 880 C. Moreover the attachment states that C45 is weldable...