I am making a set of fingers for my 24" DiAcro fingerbrake, out of
1.25" hotrolled steel plates, and decided to square the roughly
bandsawed blocks, on the shaper. Being hot rolled..there is a thick
scale skin and its rough on endmills and fly cutters. Plus the blocks
may have been flame cut from a larger plate at the mill..the edges
seem to have a faint flame cut edge..so there is a HAZ that needs to
be gotten through. Ive got face mills..but the big Gorton has no power
feed..and I hate face milling by hand on stuff thats gonna need a
heavy cut

Id tried a slab mill on my Clausing 8540..but for some reason..the
table is rocking and I cant see exactly where..sigh..another Roundtuit
to address....

With the vise..the 8" shaper is NOT capable of squaring a 6" block, so
I pulled the support rail out from under the table and lowered the
table down, using a thinner support rail to give me the smidge of room
I needed.

I set the stroke, travel etc..and let it run a couple cycles to check
out everything. All a-ok

So I set the feed per stroke on the dovetailed gizmo on the end of the
crank and let her run.

It was making a nice cut..and suddenly the link that goes between the
feed dog mechanism on the feed worm and the dovetailed gizmo bent
slightly and the rachet mechanism dropped below 2 Oclock..the link not
being long enough.Before I could shut it off..it busted out one side
of the dovetailed gizmo on the end of the crank. PLINK!!!

The part apparently is cast iron. So I have two options...drill and
tap, or drill and dowel pin and then braze, or make a new dovetailed
gizmo from scratch. I do have the proper sized dovetail cutter (and if
I were any good..Id use the shaper itself to cut the
dovetail....shrug)

What should I do? Try to pin and weld the old part, or make a new one?
Buying one from Logan..is financially out of the question for me at
this time.

Should I hunt around for a proper piece of cast iron, or should I use
nitrated silly putty for the new part? Im fresh out of unobtainium
and the last time I did lanthanated titanium..the lathe caught fire.

Second time in a year where I wished I had a bigger shaper..damnit

There is a pretty nice Gemco 16" I might be able to get...hydraulic I
think..but then..Id have to move the Rolls Royce out of the shop to
make room.

Sigh..what to do..what to do.....

G

Gunner, who is negotiating for a Albine miller



"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them;
the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."
- Proverbs 22:3