Gas, tires, oil.

I’ve talked before about the characteristics to look for in a good metal working drill press, here’s a couple more. A good drill press should have the chuck mounted on a morse taper shank. This allows you to have several chucks and switch between them, say, a big one so you can use 5/8″ or 3/4″ shank drills and a nice small accurate one for very small drills. It also allows you to use drills with morse taper shanks:

In addition, other cutting tools can have morse taper shanks (end mills, flycutters…) and special morse taper holders are availible for things like center drills, taps and dies.
The other thing a good drill press should have is either “back gears” or a third pulley sheave, this lets you use large diameter drill bits. Just because you can chuck up a 1″ silver and demming (1/2″ reduced shank) bit doesn’t mean you can successfully drill with it. Large bits need to be turned slowly or they will burn up, holesaws are even worse.

With only two sheaves I’d only be able to vary the speed from ~700 to 2000 rpm, but with three I can go from 250 to 3100 rpm

My grandfather (an old world trained tool and die maker) claimed that a large (over 1″) bit should be turned slowly enough that the outside of the flutes are not blurred when you look at it.

Here is a little tool-making interlude in the saga of my 10 bolt to dana 44 axle swap in my wife’s ‘82 diesel 4x4 suburban. Turns out I had to change knuckles. The dana 44 knuckles used a drag link that mounted on top of the arms and nearly (within a 1/4″) hit the springs. So I had to swap on my 10 bolt knuckles that used a bottom mount drag link. I knew I would have to adjust the ball joints as part of this swap, but didn’t have the spanner wrench. I suppose I could have bought one, but making a custom spanner isn’t that hard. The first step is to find a socket to modify, I keep a large selection of cheap sockets just for this sort of thing, they’re harder than mild steel, but not so hard that a hacksaw won’t cut them. Plus they already have a square drive for a ratchet (or torque wrench in this case). I needed a deep socket to fit over the ball joint stud.

It was a pretty good fit, just needed a little ground off the OD. Then I made the vertical cuts with a hacksaw.

Then hogged out the majority with a hand grinder, if I was making a tool that only fit two notches I could have cut in from the sides with the hacksaw.

Then it was just hand fitting with a bastard file.

Fits nicely, back to the swap next time.

I’ve needed to gas cylinders for my torch for a while now. I had been renting the mid-size bottles with a 5 year lease, but I’ve been thinking it’d be nice to have a more portable setup. I found some small bottles on Craigslist, an MC sized acetylene (10 Cu. feet) and an A sized oxygen (20 Cu. feet). These are the smallest bottles, sometimes referred to as a “plumber’s torch”. The oxygen bottle has the same fitting (CGA 540) as the larger ones, so my regulator would just mount up. The acetylene bottle however has a CGA 200 outlet, while the larger bottles have the CGA 510, also known as a POL fitting (the same left hand thread fitting on propane tanks). I could have gotten a new fitting for my regulator, but I like being able to use a BBQ propane tank (it’s cheaper and availible on weekends). Propane doesn’t get quite as hot, but it’s fine for cutting and brazing. So instead I ordered an adaptor from Mcmaster-Carr (~$10) that goes from CGA 510 to CGA 200. CGA stands for “Compressed Gas Association” by the way.

Now I can switch from the MC acetylene tank to propane quickly.

I guess the first thing I need to make is a little carrying stand for the tanks.

Nothing like a good drill press:

I lucked out and got it at a yardsale for $100. Besides the ability to swivel the table in several axes, this one is especially nice because it has two sets of pulleys. This allows speeds as low as 150 RPM, which is what you need for drilling large diameter holes. That’s a section of X-band microwave waveguide I’m working on.

I found a pic of the platform I attached to my floor jack for removing the trans/transfercase.

I just counter sunk a bolt into a 2x12 piece of scrap. The cup that normally sits there just has a 1″ stem that sits in a hole, so I just picked it up off and ran the bolt through the hole.
The 2x4 on the front is there to make it level, the rear trans mount sticks down below the pan.

Here it is after the old trans has been lowered. I had to push the trans off the jack and then drag it out from under the suburban because I didn’t have the clearance to just pull it out on the jack.

My wife got an early christmas present last friday (the eve of christmas eve) when I found this coffin top Singer sewing machine at the fleamarket.

Interestingly, the base has a slot for a belt so it could also be used on a treadle base, but most bases would just take the bare machine. I haven’t seen a treadle base that would accept this wooden base. But it is set up for hand crank use right now.

After some oiling and some web research to find out how to thread the shuttle, it started to sew nicely. A look up online of the serial number showed it to be made in 1904 in Scotland. That night, my wife used it to sew a christmas stocking for the baby.

Not bad for 101 year old machine.

I picked up the car-shaped sanding block at a yardsale for a couple bucks (actually, nearly everthing in the picture is from a yardsale, flea market or auction, including the shelf itself).

Maybe blocking out a car won’t suck so much with this stylish block.

I finally got some painting done last weekend. I did a forward control bracket for the trike, the front fender for my sportster and the aol CD case that is the prize for the Name that Tool winner. Today I’ll just cover the CD case.

First, I had to find a way to hold the pieces for painting. I used drywall screws to join some block of wood, then I used a staplegun to attach some duct tape sticky side out. They stuck really well, to remove them I had to cut the tape, then peel it off.

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This is the flyleaf from a 1940s copy of “Audel’s Machinist’s Handy Book”. Machine shop lore says that the lathe is the only tool that can reproduce itself. I think that’s a bit of a stretch though, it would have to be a particularly well outfitted lathe with a milling and grinding attachment.

One of the few things I got done over the weekend was changing the oil in my sportster. I like to check the old filter for metal particles as a diagnostic tool. You need to cut it open because the oil flows from the outside in. First, pop a hole in the side, near the top, I used a screwdriver.

Then I use a nibbler to cut all the way around.

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