Making a Dial Travel Indicator Mount for my 10K South Bend Lathe

I've had a chunk of cast iron put aside for over a year so I can make a DTI mount for my South Bend lathe. I found the magnetic indicator was shifting in use, which negates the utility. So I decided to wing it and just carve one out. I didn't use anything more precise in this job than a Sharpie and my eyeballs for layout, although having a 45 degree angle gage helped when setting the piece for the vee groove.

Milling the saw cuts flat.

Roughing it out.

Milling the 90 degree vee.

Milling the far end for relief from the ways.

Milling out a bit more.

Drilling for the clamping bolt.

Transferring the bolt hole to a clamp plate.

Tapping the plate.

Looking good!

Hole for the indicator laid out.

Drilling.

Reaming to 3/8"

Tapping for the indicator lock screw.

Drilling out the end of a #10 screw.

A small piece of brass was pressed in and faced off.

It works!

I lifted the magnetic base indicator off the lathe and it fell apart...I guess this was the cause of the slop. I can't believe it was just pressed together...

Match drilling the plate and stop.

A dowel pin pressed into the hole to keep the clamp plate aligned. The clamp plate hole was drilled slightly larger.

I sanded and deburred all the surfaces and edges. About an hour and a half of relaxing and imprecise machining. It locks up rock solid. Little accessories like this pay for themselves the first time you use them.

Turret Syndrome

Dennis wanted me to make 3 more sets of bushings for him , 18 bushings in total. I thought I'd try using the turret attachment for my South Bend 10K.

Three drill chucks, with the center drill, a 1/4" and a 7/16" drill. I spot the hole, drill through with the 1/4" and enlarge to 7/16".

If I wasn't using the turret I would have had to tighten a drill chuck 54 times and loosen 54 times. The turret doesn't have as much mechanical pressure as the screw feed tailstock, so it was a tiny bit slower when actually drilling, but overall it was faster and easier.
Why don't I just drill with the 7/16"? I found that it was faster to drill through at a higher speed with the 1/4" bit, then follow with the 7/16" than it would be if I slowed the spindle down and drilled with the 7/16" bit only. And I'd still have to center drill, lathes being what they are.

A Little Night Smithing

Kent's postman wants him to make a 12" long, 3" wide wedge. Kent has no idea why.

Sawing off a chunk of 3" square stock.

Smoky.

It took a long time to heat up the steel.

Kent starts with the hammering.

More hammering.

The ends were starting to curl over on each other, which is bad. So he started correcting it.

You can't really make out the look of sheer terror I felt with Kent swinging a 20 lb sledge at me.

Kent had welded a pipe on the end of the wedge chunk.

I wouldn't want to do this all day.

Still a long way to go.

Massive Linkfest

Felice has been stealing all the good pictures of the kids for her blog, so I figured I'd just dump a bunch of links I've saved up for the blog:

• Stuff Korean Moms Like
  A funny blog by a Korean Daughter.
• Pandora Radio
  A wonderful way to listen and discover music.
• My First Two Linecasters
  My friend David bought two linecasters.
• Spaceweather
  What's going on up there?
• Report: 60 Million People You'd Never Talk To Voting For Other Guy
  Best political analysis ever.
• BIC Mossy Oak Lighter
  Saw this in the store. Best way to lose a lighter on a camping trip.
• 100 Skills Every Man Should Know
  I know most of them, do you?
• State gives two local schools A+
  Turns out Philomath has a pretty good school system.
• Physical Display With Deformable Skin
  An interesting deformable display system.
  

Here's what I've been reading:

• Much Ado About Me
  Fred Allen's autobiography and account of the days of Vaudeville.
• Fallen Angels
  Beware the coming ice age.
• Swing, Swing Together: A Sergeant Cribb Mystery
  An enjoyable little mystery.

Finally, I watched Southland Tales, which is a mess of an apocalyptic movie. Yet I enjoyed it. Most reviewers didn't. You probably won't either.

Just Hanging Out

Well, Henry started taking Taekwondo lessons. The local ATA franchise is Karate for Kids in Corvallis and they have conveniently started giving classes at the local Philomath dance studio, so it's less of a commute. 2 classes a week, only 1/2 hour at a time...

The uniform is cool, as is Henry.

He likes the classes.

Max has another opinion on the subject of outfits. He'll start Taekwondo in a year or two.

Max made this "Batman" mask at the Fall Festival in Corvallis. I think he looks more like Hawkman. I brought both boys down and we all vended(?) as a family. We were set up at what we call the "fake fall festival" which takes place across the street at the First Christian Church.

Extending an existing woodruff keyway for the neighbor. Notice the jack supporting the free end against the force of the cut.

Corneal Abrasion, Helicoils and an Anaglyph

Thursday night, in a bout of typical roughhouse on the couch, Max managed to scrape his fingers across the surface of my eyeball. The good news is that corneal abrasions heal very quickly. The bad news is that while they heal it feels like there's a porcupine rolling around under your eyelid. But I'm all better now.

Rudi, our next door neighbor at the Saturday Market, stripped out one of the clamping screw threads in his Sherline rocker toolpost. He uses a Sherline lathe for some of his turned boxes and needed it repaired or replaced ASAP. So I volunteered to fix it.

Out came the #10-32 tpi Helicoil kit.

The stripped hole on the right.

Drilling out the hole.

Tapping with a Helicoil tap. The tap is of the same pitch as the stripped hole, but with a larger diameter.

The helicoil insert. It is basically a helical coil of wire.

The straight tang at the end enables the insertion tool to drive it into the hole.

The insert is loaded into the tool and screwed through the body to compress it around the insertion screw. Then the end of the tool is pressed against the hole and the insert screwed in.

And the insert is inserted.

The tang is visible at the bottom and must be removed.

One sharp whack with a punch does the job.

I found my old Red-Blue Anaglyph camera jig and showed the kids how to take 3D anaglyphs. I used the free Anaglyph Maker software.

How I ever got Max to stand still for the minute or so it took to make the two images I'll never know.

Modifying Some Parts for Spud

Spud wanted me to bore out some parts for him.

Of course he wanted me to bore out some seriously odd shaped parts...dialing in the center on the 4 jaw chuck, trying to remember not to hit the internal keyway as I rotate the chuck around.

Taking a pass, I had to go lightly due to the interrupted nature of the cut.

Zeroing a caliper, with extensions, on a gage block stack. I checked diameter after each pass.

I set the tool to just kiss the bottom of the bore and zeroed a travel indicator.

Finished.

A few of the parts.