On 2010-03-25, danmitch wrote:
That's been pretty much my point all along. Just because something
doesn't conform to current practice, doesn't mean it was never done.
Current practice has been arrived at by long experience. It's usually
either what works best, or (still) works (maybe just barely) and is
least expensive, as best we know NOW.

A lot of things were done differently, and perhaps not wisely, in days
past. They didn't know what worked best back then (nor do we today),
just what worked adequately for the time.

And, once you accept that such practices existed, those who had to work
with them learned HOW to use them to maximum effect. In many old
industries you learned HOW to do something properly or got fired (or
died) early. Everyday practice back then would be considered totally
reckless today ... but they did it, they (usually) got the job done,
they built our industries and our nation (world), and even (often, but
not always) survived.

You also can't separate industrial practice from everyday living in it's
own time frame ... LOTS of things were dangerous back then, and many
people didn't live long for all sorts of reasons. Some of them may have
been safer at work than at home.

You do the best you can with what you've got.


I think that the take home lesson from this very interesting
discussion is as follows:

1) It is possible to use Morse taper tooling for milling, under
some conditions.
2) Despite that, the modern NMTB tooling is clearly much better.

I have also realized that, possibly, these toolholders were used for
straight shank drills, or hones, or something other than milling. That
would invalidate my point 1).

i