Lathe
Machining Wood in the mini lathe
I’ve been doing some simple wood turning in the lathe over the last few weeks. I found that the local DIY superstore sold hemlock balustrade blanks, for a couple of pounds. This is a pale wood that is fine grained
Milling in the lathe
As mentioned in previous article about compound tables and cross vices, I’m interesting in milling to get better results than manual filing for my T-nuts. I realised that because of the small side of these nuts it would be possible
Finishing the Bezel
The bezel I started a few days back was finished off on Monday night and delivered to a happy recipient. The surface was given a very light skim to remove the paint and the ends were rounded off freehand with
Posted in: Lathe, Machining, Turning
Tags: heat expansion
Bezel making
The latest mini project is the making of a doughnut shaped ring in 3mm sheet aluminium. The inner diameter is 54mm and the outer diameter is 70mm. The outer edge needs to be rounded off. The part is to act
Posted in: Bezel, Lathe, Machining, Trepanning, Work Holding
Materials: Aluminium
Tags: boring
Pipecleaners
My tip for the day is to get hold of some pipe cleaners. These are great for getting bits of swarf from out of the nooks and crannies of your lathe and can also be used for cleaning out threads
Posted in: Lathe
Tags: Pipecleaners, Swarf
Faceplate Dogs
Last month I roughly sawed and filed my cast aluminium blobs into blocks. The resulting blocks were too large to fit into my 3 jaw chuck so I hoped to mount them on the faceplate. There are many ways of
Posted in: Face Plate Dogs, Lathe, Machining, Work Holding
Blobs to blocks 2
From my second cast, I produced the following two blobs. The left hand one was much better than previous attempts with a large section of straight sides and a better finish. I expect the right one would have been better
Posted in: Casting, Lathe, Machining
Materials: Aluminium
Tags: faceplate dogs, Metal Work
Machined blob
This weekend I machined up one the castings from last week’s melt. Here’s the stages from scrap to machined results. Step 1Some scrap ali that I found round the back of the shed, sawn up into suitable sized pieces to
Posted in: Casting, Lathe, Machining
Materials: Aluminium
Tags: Metal Work, Scrap
Metal sculpture in brass, mounted on an 1800s French Coin
