Lloyd E. Sponenburgh lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:
Cydrome Leader fired this volley in news:kiq0ns
:


slide steady rest towards chuck and repeat.

From this, can we assume that the spindle bore in the Sherline is too
small to pass the 1/2" material through?

the spindle bore is too small. It's something like 3/8".

If the bore is large enough, you'd be better off setting up a feed stop
you can swing out of the way when machining, and only have as much
overhang from the chuck as necessary to turn and part the work. Then
loosen the chuck, feed more out to the stop, and re-tighten.

Is there a sensible way to make a carriage stop for a sherline? It's
pretty easy to overshoot a cut and you can't undo that. Since mine
is fed by hand, I guess I'd feel the carriage slamming into metal block or
something clamped on the ways, but it just doesn't seem like it would be
all that accurate.

If you didn't want to build a feed stop, you could still make a small
gauge that would allow you to measure the stickout from the chuck -- or
you could just eyeball it, if that's what you're doing now.

Assuming the rod would fit though the spindle, I'd probably use the
toolpost as a depth stop of sorts. For right now, I'm just working towards
the chuck. I've been touching the cutting tool to the end of the rod with
a piece of aluminum foil as a feeler, resetting the DRO to 0 and working
from there. Since the the side that gets faced off has to be cut again and
again by eye until it's smooth, that then becomes 0 again and I face the
0.200" diameter part off at exactly 0.375". Changing the reference point
for measurements seem wrong to me, but I can't think of a better way to do
this.

Is the rest of the process I'm using sensible though?