On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 01:32:31 +0000, Fdmorrison wrote:

Artemia Salina

There is a bit of slop where the cylinder slides on the rod,
and that's because I could only drill the .5" hole and it's
not completely straight, forcing me to turn the rod undersized.
I should be able to ream the hole oversize a bit and make a new
rod with a true slip fit. Once I get a reamer....

If you drill undersized and then single-point bore you get closer.

This was my first plan, but I realized that I didn't have a boring bar
in my set that was long enough. I would've had to have bored half way
in and then flipped the sleeve and finished from the other end. It seemed
too error prone and I have very little spare stock for the sleeve.

I'm not sure what the steel is, some sort of high carbon stuff I think.
It was in my junk collection. But although it is harder than mild steel
the finish produced when truing up the OD was excellent.

If you use a piece of drill rod for the rod, then try to match it as close as
you can get in machining the sleeve--that may be the way to get a good slip
fit.

The rod I'm using is an old grinding wheel arbor shaft that I bought from
Sears hardware. Very inexpensive IIRC but the finish is outstanding when
turned. I had a little left over so today I was practicing single pointing
threads with it, and I remain impressed with it. The threads were smooth as
silk with no tearing, even when viewed under a strong magnifying glass.
The stuff is about 5/8" in diameter and about 8 or 10" long, overall.
I mention this in case anyone is in a bind and needs short lengths of
steel rod that has to give a good finish in a hurry.

Half inch, etc. reamers should be common on the used market locally in CT.

I wonder if Al Babin is still in CT? :-)