Making a lathe carriage stop pt. 2

In the second installment of this series I machine all the critical features of the stop. I demonstrate how to accurately measure the depth of a v grove as well as a little trick to get around not having a DRO.

Posted in: Machining, Videos
Part of the Project

Making a lathe carriage stop pt. 1

Making a carriage stop for my lathe, whats one of my first milling projects when I got into machining 10 years ago. While my original design has served me well for many years, I’ve decided to make some design tweaks, that will hopefully improve it. The following video is the first in what will be a short series, documenting the construction of my new stop.

Posted in: Machining, Videos
Part of the Project

Cleaning & storing collets

If you’ve been following any of my recent posts, you know I’ve been making space in my tool chest. The tool(s) I was making space for, was a 1/32nd set of 5C collets from Mari tool.  A set of good collets is not cheap, but if they are properly cared for they can last a lifetime. Thus, when they arrived the other day I thought others might find the inspection, cleaning, and storage process interesting.

When I opened the cardboard shipping box, I found several small hand labeled bags, each containing 2 collets. Each collet was coated in a layer of oil/grease, and sealed in an air tight plastic bag.

asShipped

Continue Reading…

Posted in: Machining

Qctp holder rack

My latest little shop reorganization project was to make a wall rack for all my AXA QCTP holders.  The rack is a fairly simple design, but to longer to make than I expected. Drilling and counter-boring 68 holes was the big time consumer, but required  to mount the holders they way I wanted. I wanted the holders orientated just like they would be be on the tool post, so that i could easily recognize what one was what. As with my last several storage projects, it made from Baltic birch plywood, and birch hardwood.

 

A quick file rack

I made this file rack the other day, to free up space in my tool chest. The slots keep the files oriented so they don’t bang into each other. The round recesses capture the ferrule, ensuring the files can’t be accidentally knocked out of the rack when reaching for one.