Vice Jaws

The mill came with a nice old Kurt vise but it was missing the jaws. Instead of buying some and waiting a week for them to come in I decided to make them.

Had some 3/4" plate kicking around the shop that happened to be 6" wide 

Roughing the torch cut ends in.

Finish Pass.

I have a 2" stone in the surface grinder to speed things up.

Left end.

Right end, I'd say its square.

After the holes were marked via a set of transfer screws I made on the lathe quick, it was center drilled, then drilled for a 1/2" bolt and counter bored.

I used the quill as a sort of press to keep the jaw tight to the vice while it was bolted in.

Finished up, 3 hrs or 1 week?

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Spark it

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Multi Purpose

Turns out that tunnel former doubles as a break if I just flip it 180...

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Loaded up

4 Hours and a lot of tactful picing, winching, prying and rolling and the grinder is on the truck. We ended up being a bit under prepared thinking the unit weighed around 500lbs but it turns out it was closer to 1000.

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Ready for the top

Banged the table base out nice and square.

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Grinding

Were having a 5' piece of steel ground for a frame table. This is one of 10 machines that will be doing the work, and its on the small side!

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Quill feed handle

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Tunnel rolling tool

With the OD set it's time to bore the bearing pocket

Press in bearing

Flip, repeat process and cut in half

Weld end cap in tube

With everything machined the tool gets assembled for the first time

In it's final position; added some bearings to the handles as a finishing touch.

First test piece in stainless, works as expected

Needless to say I forgot to take pictures at some crucial points in the making of this tool but my concentration on the task got the better of me and I forgot. It's a pretty simple concept though so I'm sure you guys can figure it out. So far on some small test pieces it works great. I have to do a tank for Gary so when I roll the tunnel ill be sure to document and post.

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Oldie but Goodie

Still working to get the mill back to factory spec, but while we are waiting for parts to arrive I figured since its all apart anyways why not paint it?

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I'm Back

With a new machine to boot. Our buddy Scott hooked us up with this mill yesterday and we started striping it down and fixing it up last night. We took the Y and Z tables off and found some obvious issues with the screw nuts so they are getting replaced with either new bronze nuts or ball screws. I'm leaning towards ball screws as I'm thinking of doing a CNC conversion on the machine over the winter. We were able to fix the quill auto feed (someone totally butchered it, had it spaced about an inch out and left it for dead). The machine runs but it's not getting hooked up until we I'm happy with it's performance. Gotta put a call in to a  friend of mine who used to scrape ways for a living as well as fix/replace some small missing parts and add a coolant res. Here are some pics of what we have so far.

Where ya Been?

I have a lot of people asking what I'm up to, what I'm building etc. The truth is, one I got back from Sturgis I felt like putting everything on hold to sort of re-group. I wanted to mess with some new things, branch out and expand on some skills and tap into new avenues. I have also been working with my brother to make the shop more efficient, economically and to work in. It's taking a long time but coming out nicely. I have also made some new tools for my lathe that will allow me to do really trick things.

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Steve B Captures "Meat Plow"

Messing Around

Some pictures I've taken recently of cool shit found through out New Haven

Freight Elevator 

Sliding Door

The King

Neon NIghts

Creepy Fan

Butt Dispenser 

Butt Dispenser II

Tool Shopping

Went to the local Industrial supply house to fill my craving for all things machine

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