Lathe
Machining square things in a lathe

This week I decided to start some work on a caliper knurling tool, based around the ideas in the Workshop Practice book, Making Small Workshop Tools. After sketching some plans, the first thing I needed to do was saw up
Old machinery

The Wellcome Trust library has a great historical archive of zoological, medical and scientific material. Amongst their plague fleas and elephants are a collection of images of lathes, chucks and tooling by the likes of Edward Speer, T. Griffiths, Joseph
Stepperhead

The stepperhead is a sophisticated multi-mode machine made by Alan Jackson. In other words, it’s both a lathe and a milling machine but it can also perform some functions not available on either. The video below shows one of these
More machining with Microscopes
Mike from Mike’s Models has also been using a Microscope for machining in his workshop. In his machining experiments with a USB microscope, he looks at the problem of drilling small holes and the drill wandering and also looks at
Making the Victorian Flea Chariot – Part 2

Machining the parts Both the axle and the wheels of the chariot needed to be machined. However due to a lack of appropriately sized material, I also ended up machining the hook at the front of the chariot. To turn
Making the Victorian Flea Chariot – Part 1

Design As mentioned in the first flea chariot article, the design of the chariot was based on those seen on pathe newsreels and from the Tivoli Gardens flea circus. The spokeless design for the wheels was on the difficulties given
Terry Brown’s Shed – Casting, Maching, Projects and Gingery Shaper

Today I stumbled across a goldmine of information. Terry Brown’s shed stuff pages contain a large number of project he’s completed over the last 7 years. There’s a section on foundry work making furnaces and melting aluminium, this is complemented
Turning different materials

Most people use their mini-lathes to turn metal or plastic and some even venture into turning wood but I expect few will be turning lino. As a Christmas present for an uncle, I made the above lino ink stamp from