In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-21, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

On 2008-02-21, Joseph Gwinn wrote:

[ ... ]

And an even bigger basement. Actually, I could make use of a horizontal
mill. But won't get it. No space.

Actually -- there are small horizontal mills which you might get
into there -- but they are still heavy. An example is the Nichols
horizontal mill (which I have) which weighs in at about 1100 pounds.
Takes up about as much space as two floor-mount drill presses.

Same as the Millrite, in both weight and footprint.

O.K. I got the Nichols for only about $200.00 IIRC -- and with
the name match, how could I resist? :-)

I've seen Nichols mills go that cheap around here (Boston area) as well.
But $500 is more common.


I'm also missing the slotted faceplate. Got the 3-jaw, 4-jaw, and
dog-driver chucks.

I got the slotted faceplate at a swap-meet/picnic held by the
local metalworking club for a quite reasonable price. I have two of the
dog drivers, one with a chip out of the outer edge, but I am going to
mill that open wider to handle the larger dogs.

I got one dog driver and no faceplate.

All of my faceplates and dog drivers were later acquisitions.
The lathe came to me with:

1 3-jaw chuck with two-piece jaws. (I think that I had to
make a key for it, too. :-)

Mine came with a shop-made key.

The 4-jaw lacked a key, so I bought one for $14.


1 Lever-style collet closer with nose adaptor and
protector for 2-1/4x8 spindle nose.

1 threading dial (in a drawer).

misc spare chuck jaws, which did not fit the chuck I got.

Check. I also got the mismatched single jaw.


It would be even nicer if I had another lathe bed section onto
which to slide it -- then I would not have to worry about it being
knocked off and damaged. Just give a couple of inches of gap between
the ends of the real bed and the dummy one, and enough length to support
the whole of the turret.

Wouldn't a bridge crane be more useful?

Not without a place to mount it. I have a folding engine hoist,
which lives out in /dev/barn01 when I don't need it, because I don't
have enough floor space in the garage^H^H^H^H^H^Hshop.

I looked at portable bridge cranes, such as sold by HF, but my ceiling
is too low. Nor do I have a place to store an engine hoist, so I rent
one from Taylor Rentals when needed, for ~$45 per day. The rental unit
is far heavier than the $170 HF units.

The height problem is another point. The lathe is under a garage
door which bends in sections and stores above the lathe. :-)

Right. My reason to investigate the bridge crane is that the legs on
the typical shop crane can very much get in the way. A bridge crane
doesn't get in its own way nearly as badly.

And can pick things up directly off the floor and raise them to full
height in one operation. The rental shop crane could only lift things
about 3 feet at a time, so one needed to rest the thing on something and
reattach it to the crane with a shorter chain.

And most bridge cranes are big enough that one can use them to move
machines to and from the bed of a flatbed or pickup truck.


Is the Clausing heavy enough for negative rake tools to be worthwhile?

[ ... ]

Some of these days I'll try it with a true negative rake insert.
I only have a 1-1/2 HP motor, but that should be equivalent to your 2HP
one since I don't have to drive the vari-speed pulley, which eats
horsepower. :-)

It's something to try. I'm thinking that I should use inserts for
roughing and HSS for finishing (where needed) and one-off grooving jobs.

Well ... I usually use inserts both for roughing and (the ground
and honed ones for the Compact-5/CNC) for finishing. I save grinding
HSS for special form tools, and for things like Acme threading tools
which are just one or two sizes too big for the insert holder which I
have for threading tools. :-)

I'll be trying this.

O.K. It was helpful to have the surface grinder for making the
Acme tools with precisely the proper relief angles for the pitch and
diameter I needed to cut. Also a sine plate and a sine bar contributed
too.

That's pretty ambitious. I think I'll just buy Acme thread inserts and
holders if the need arises.


Joe Gwinn