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Hi, Has anyone had experience with an Optimum TU2907 Lathe? Also, how do you get quoted text to appear shaded in these posts? Regards, Alan C.

"If the holes are being drilled oversize then the cutting edges are of uneven lengths i.e the drill is ground off-centre , is there no way to adjust this on the sharpener ?" Hi, I thought the same myself but the drill looked symmetrical to me (although that may be why I'm crap at hand...

Hi, I splashed out $100 on a drill sharpener as shown in the picture - mainly because I'm hopeless at freehand sharpening. I thought there might be some interest in how it performed. On the plus side, it does what it says in that the old drills I sharpened were in fact sharpened and cut...

Hi Graham, A nice looking flywheel. I did something similar a while ago i.e. made a flywheel just for the hell of it to see if I could. Mine ended up 139mm dia. by 31mm wide. I ended up designing an engine to use it. If you are interested, the plans and instructions are here...

Hi, I decided to follow Wizard 69s advice and try cutting an m8 x 1.25 thread using both a 8.00mm rod and a 7.72mm rod. I cut them both until a nut was a tight fit on them. The root diameters came out pretty much the same (calculated from the movements of the compound slide and the starting...

Hi, It's explained here. http://www.eccentricengineering.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid I'm a real fan. It's brilliant for cutting steel. Alan C.

Hi, I've been cutting threads on a lathe for years in a rough and ready way. I keep removing metal until a nut will just about go on and finish the job with a die nut. I needed to cut an m8x1.25 thread today and decided to calculate the infeed required on the compound slide and do the...

Hi, I came across this on youtube. It certainly seems to have an advantage over dividing heads and rotary tables for odd numbered gears. I have an old Myford vertical slide. I wonder if I can get it fitted to my current machine? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBlBJ5RWTSk He's also come...

Hi all, I was at the steel merchants a while ago and came across an offcut of 5” schedule 80 pipe. I've wanted to make a flywheel out of heavy duty pipe for a while so I bought the offcut. I managed to make the flywheel although the 5” pipe was at the very limit of what I could...

Hi, It's probably not on topic as far as constructing a Merlin engine goes, but I snapped the attached picture this afternoon. A local guy has made a set of formers to construct plywood Mosquito fuselages. This is his second one and the twin Merlins came roaring overhead this afternoon. A...

Hi Blanik, I've got both a Vertex BS-0 dividing head and an HV - 4 rotary table which I use on my SX 2.7 mill. I bought the BS-0 more than 20 years ago. It was really expensive back then (about NZ$1,000 I think). It swivels so you can set it up so the face is horizontal but by...

Thanks all. That has sorted it out. What are your views on solid carbide cutters versus cutters that take inserts? Speaking of high speed steel, there has been a bit of it turning up on the local auction site at low prices. I bought a couple of lengths and made a thread cutting tool out of a...

Hi, I'm interested in trying some carbide end mills but I'm getting a bit confused. I've found some which are described as carbide end mills, but later are described as HSS (high speed steel?) with a AlTiN coating. Are these carbide end mills? I thought carbide meant they would be made of...

Hi, I'd try caustic soda to get rid of the sodium silicate sand. I'd start of with a 10% solution (100grams/liter of water). Add the caustic soda to the water while stirring and make sure you have at least safety glasses and rubber gloves with no bare skin showing - caustic soda burns hurt...

Hi James, I'm in Auckland and can offer a bit of advice. Last year my old Emco V10P (a really nice example of Austrian engineering) lathe which which I had bought second hand 10 -15 years ago had finally got to the stage where I needed to get a replacement. I did a lot of...

Thanks for the links Tin. Do you know what the primary and secondary angles are for a 4 facet drill? I think I can see how to use the Eccentric Engineering sharpening system to sharpen twist drills. It's already set up to grind 2 different relief angles. Regards, Alan C.

Hi Tony, As far as the flywheel goes, can you get a bit of schedule 80 steam pipe of the right diameter, turn it to suit the flywheel and loctite it on? I've just made a flywheel from an offcut of 5" nominal bore pipe and the finished dimensions are 125mm ID with a wall thickness of...

Hi All, Thanks for all the helpful comments. It's a shame that the Hafco model I was looking at seems to have received the thumbs down - at a bit over $100 it would have been worth it if it worked. I think at some stage I'll try to get my head around the four facet method and see if I...

Hi Hopper, I did a workshop technology course over 20 years ago and was shown how to grind a drill. I got to be just good enough to pass the test but never got good enough to be happy with the results. Could be because I was over 40 and not a 16 year old apprentice. I agree...

Hi Tin, As it stands at the moment the EE sharpener isn't set up to sharpen drills. The EE website says an attachment to allow drills to be sharpened using the 4 facet method is under development but isn't available yet. I don't understand enough about the method to come up with...