home made tools and equipment...

^^^^^Interesting stuff and good to know.

 

Saw one of these on fleabay for 88 bucks, made mine for 4... jig for stamping plates that identify things....

 

?

 

A jig to make a square cut when shortening the bung on a split wishbone.

Washers tacked together after checking for flatness with a piece of 80 grit on plywood. Used a dial caliper to check parallelism. Smallest I.D. fits tie rod end.


What I am shortening.


Jig installed


Using thumbnail to hold blade dead square to the jig. Cut all the way around but not into the tie rod end. Then remove jig and finish the cut. Lastly, carefully dress the cut and chamfer it with a flat file.


Finished product with the cut off piece.

 

Clever idea. I am notorious for not cutting square with a hacksaw. For round pipe, I put my brake tubing cutter (or plastic conduit tubing cutter for larger stuff) on it and spin the cutter. This makes a neat, square line all around the pipe to guide my hacksaw butchery. Normally can't cut all the way through the pipe with the tubing cutters as the little wheels are not durable enough.

Cheers,
Harv

 

Thanks. For pipe, I'm a masking tape guy. Wouldn't work this time because of the taper.

 

Here's a saw I made many years ago. It obviously was made from a sabre saw blade but I have no idea what I made it for. I do seem to remember that the bends in the nail (gutter spike???) had to be just so-so for it to work. Anyway:

 

I haven't built it yet but I was wondering about the feasibility of using a large steel caster wheel, say 8" for the top anvil in an English wheel. I was in Northern Tool yesterday looking at casters and their steel casters seem to be just
the ticket. Load capacity is rated at 1760#

.

 

I've looked at the very same thing! And thought the very same thing too!

The only thing I thought of was sanding the outside smooth and figured that it ought to work nicely. Found one on ebay that was cheaper but never pulled the trigger and bought it.

I decided to finish the sand blaster that I started on a couple yrs ago first before putting money into a different tool.

Finally finished my homemade heavy duty tubing bender complete with homemade 1" and 1-1/4" tubing dies, shrinker/stretcher stand this last year and now totally revamping my air compressor setup and all new 3/4" air lines.

Then I'll finish the sand blaster, 2 ft x 4ft box on it. Then the English wheel and planishing hammer is next. Oh and somewhere in there is the 4ft metal brake I want to build.

But damn! I wish metal prices would come down !!

.

 

I don't know exactly what the relationship is but my son, who for years had a business building large quantities of ornamental gates and fences for ultra large apartment complexes, pointed out to me that when the price of oil goes up, so does the price of steel. His suppliers went from monthly to daily price adjustments. The same applies for the price of scrap steel. About 5 years back, the scrappers would pay $3.00 per hundred weight. The price of oil went up and the scrap price went to $11.00 per hundred. It's now at $7.00 where I am and I expect it to go higher.

 

I’ve been acquiring more tools and my garage space is limited. So I got creative. I made a cable lift for my big bead roller. Now it’s up and out of the way when not in use.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CZAzSFslKS6/?utm_medium=share_sheet

 

Wrench for the input shaft front bearing retainer nut on a Muncie.

 

Made one that was almost identical to that a while back. Unfortunately I don't remember what it was for or where I put it. But it worked perfectly. Thanx for the reminder.

Now I'll be looking for it the next trip to the shop. Yeah, it's only a few steps from the house but I'm old; it's cold; there's many inches of white rain out there right now; I ran the snowblower for an hour and a half yesterday and don't feel like doing any more; I'll look after the next meltdown.

 

How long do you think that set of headers is going to last?






Bones

 

AlanP - nice idea for the english wheel - but look into getting them trued and cleaned up on a lathe - both the upper wheel and lower wheel. I have one of these as well and after some quick measurements - it's not perfectly flat across or round, which will affect the steel you're trying to work. Also any imperfections in the surface will transfer to the metal as well. But great idea for an english wheel - now I have another future project (at this rate I'm going to have to live till I'm over 100 just to build all these neat projects)

 

When it gets to $250 a ton, here, a lot of stuff on the ranch is headed to the scraper! I have close to 75 “things” that roll and are heavy!






Bones

 

Finally finished my lathe. View attachment 5324023

 

Not sure why it posted all the pictures twice. Anyway, there used to be a company called Lindsey Publications that did reprints of old technical books. Steam engines, machine shop operating manuals, that sort of thing. They also published do it yourself tool books and plans. Got the plans years ago, started building it, and it sat on my bench forever. Couple of weeks ago I decided I wanted my bench space back so I got my ass in gear and finished it. Headstock and tailstock are Cummins diesel pistons, pretty much everything else is cold rolled steel.

 

I've got a set of books reprinting make your own things from the '30s from Popular Mechanics However most of the starting parts can't be found

 

Nice job! I'm into plaigerizing people. I have an older Delta Double Duty wood/metal lathe, but unfortunately it didn't come with the metal machining attachments. But looking at your piece of machine art, I can now see how I can make the missing parts.

 

I like the home made lathe. Very cool.

 

@bigdog Nice job on the lathe. I have those plans. There was also a milling machine made using the pistons as well if im not mistaken.

 

@Dave G in Gansevoort you can find a set of plans in pdf format somewhere on the internet if I remember right on building a cross slide. Its from an old issue of popular mechanics or science I think.

 

Thanks for the tip. I've got to look for them.

 

@Dave G in Gansevoort opensourcemachinetools.org has a pdf of cross slide for metal turning on your wood lathe. I think its listed under resources or something like that.

 

I bought a paper cutter for making doodle pads from one side use(d) printer paper. I discovered it can also cut old T-shirts into shop wipers.

 

Is this the one you were thinking of?
http://www.opensourcemachinetools.org/archive-manuals/lathe-toolslide.pdf

 

@alanp561 there was a set of plans available years ago for an english wheel that used a large caster wheel for the top and also a different type of caster wheel for the lowers.

 

@Jiminy yes.