Next I removed the two nuts that held the housing together and removed the end of the motor housing and the rotor. I needed to remove the stator as well to get access to the wires, but I was stumped on how to get it out without damaging it. It’s a tight press-fit in the housing.

After a bit if pondering I thought I might be able to slip c-clamps under the lip of the stator and use them to extract the stator. It worked like a charm.

I turned each c-clamp a 1/2 turn alternating back and fourth so that the stator pulled out straight without binding. After a few minutes it was out.

With the stator out I had access to the wiring. I noticed that both wires going to the stator had black cloth shielding so there was no visual indicator of which was hot and which was neutral. However, the power cord did have a white (neutral) and black (hot) wire so I made a note of which stator wire went to the white and which went to the black, and then I removed the old power cord. Note, there was no green (ground) wire.

Next I slipped a piece of black heat shrink tubing over the hot wire going to the stator and a piece of white heat shrink tubing over the neutral wire going to the stator. That way I wouldn’t mix them up.

Then I needed to replace the rubber grommet, slip the new power cord through and wire it up. Here you can see the old power cord vs the new power cord. I was able to salvage the on/off switch on the old power cord and wire it up on the new cord.

It was time to give the grinder a test run, but right away I discovered that the guard hit my cross slide. I had to raise the grinder above centerline to get it to fit. I’ll eventually replace the guard (which isn’t the original anyway) with a smaller one that doesn’t interfere. Here’s the grinder being used for the first time.

And here’s what the ground surface looked like. It’s a bit rough, but I haven’t dressed the grinding wheel yet so it’s only hitting in one spot. Once properly dressed I think the grinder will produce a wonderful finish. Which brings me to a request, if anyone has an extra diamond dresser that they don’t need please let me know (you can contact me via the “Contact Us” tab at the top of the page or through the Forum). In the meantime I’ll keep an eye out for one on eBay.

So, the lesson here is if you see an old Dumore tool post grinder on eBay that’s selling for cheap because the power cord is 50 years old, cracking, and falling apart – BUY IT! Replacing the power cord is easy and having a tool post grinder in your shop is worth it!

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Vernon Peterson came up with a great idea when he decided to build a base for his Magnetic Drill. Personally I’ve always wanted a Mag Drill, but I’ve never had a project that required one so it was a hard purchase to sneak past the wife. But with Vernon’s base I could totally justify adding a Mag Drill to my shop because it would double as a second drill press!

Here’s a video of Vernon’s creation:

Vernon originally posted this project to the forum here, but I liked the project so much I felt it needed to be featured on the home page.

I hope it inspires those of you who own a mag drill to pull it out, dust it off, and turn it into a more frequently used tool in your shop.

You can download plans to make your own below.

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By now you’ve all probably come across Dave Gingery’s book on building a metalworking lathe from scratch. Michele from Belgium seems to have done just that, but he didn’t use Gingery’s plans. He made his own!

Michele states that the dimensions for his lathe are a peak of 130mm (which I assume means a swing of 260mm?) with an overall bed length of 1000mm. That roughly translates to a 10″ x 40″ lathe.

But this isn’t the only thing Michele has build from scratch. He also constructed a clockmaker’s gear cutter, the plans for which I posted here last year.

Michele provides plenty of pictures and details for this lathe on his website, which can be found here (English translation) or here (original French). You can also find other versions of the plans for the lathe (DXF, DWG, etc) on Michele’s site, as well as other projects that you might be interested in.

Oh, and this probably goes without saying, but his plans are in French. That shouldn’t pose much of a problem, but I thought I’d mention it.

Thanks for sharing your plans Michele! I’m sorry it has taken me so long to post them.

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Here’s a video of the attachment in action.

And here are a few pics.

I know what some of you Atlas purists are thinking. “How could anything be better than a Marvin?!” Well, for one thing, it’s available. I’ve never seen a Marving on eBay or anywhere else for sale (although they do supposedly show up for sale occassionally). And I’ve heard that when Marvin milling attachments do show up for sale they cost a fortune. Unless you’re a collector the Marvin isn’t practical. John’s attachment is.

Got a better idea for a vertical milling attachment conversion for an Atlas (or similar) horizontal mill? Share it with us by visiting the forum and leaving a comment/pictures/etc. We’d love to see it!

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You’ll also get a little humor along the way – something that is usually missing from most machining-related videos. What stones do you have in your toolbox? Feel free to add your “two cents” by visiting the forum topic related to this video.

Enjoy!

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If you’re tired of anemic, one-lung snowblowers with their slipping drive belts, you might consider Kai Grundt’s V8 snow blower which raises the bar on the traditional snow blower in every respect. With electric start, electric block heater, antifreeze heater and eight cylinders, it has no drive belts to freeze up and you’ll never get bored with the job as the 454 cubic inch big block Chevrolet V8 produces 412 horsepower, 430 foot pounds of torque and can throw snow 50 feet at just 3500 rpm. Nor will you get cold as the machine has been ingeniously designed to route the engine coolant through the handle bars, with the rear mounted, enclosed radiator keeping the operator nice and cosy.

The first point to make is that this is not a V8 grafted on a traditional snow blower carriage but a purpose-built unit crafted around a motor of this magnitude. It functions very much like a traditional blower by way of operator input and feedback and offers effortless safe operation.

Manouevering the massive beastie (it has a total wet weight of 912lbs) is a snack thanks to the hydraulic-drive 4WD skid steer on independent walking beams which offers a zero turning radius. It’s also as fast as you like, with an infinitely adjustable speed range on the drive wheels via dash mounted flow control. At the opposite end of the scale, it has more than enough torque to pull your car out of the ditch before the hydraulic motors stall!

Adding to the well-balanced feel of the unit, just 15 pounds of down force on the handlebars will lift the auger blade off the ground in order to climb stairs/walkways for ease of snow removal. Safety has and continues to be paramount with spring return to centre “fail safe” type directional controls with emergency stop and tether cords.

Safety is one of the key theme, with a flashing blue light (as required by law in many areas) being the least of the safety features. No-one will fail to hear you with those twin throaty exhausts, which come standard with 92 decibels at the controls, though if the rhumba of a V8 exhaust is music to your ears, you can obviously go much louder. Evan at the standard baffling, hearing protection is strongly suggested.

The powerful yard machine lights and a dashboard with backlit gauges complete the package to ease the burden of this normally reviled task

The custom 42 inch, two stage auger has a Chevrolet 10 bolt truck differential with spool and a centrifugal auger clutch with shear pin protection, further adding to the image of this “automotive theme blower.” As each unit is cutom-built, optional extras for the snowblower are both diverse and outrageous as the base unit – there is unlimited auger choices from single to multi stage designs and various motor combinations to suit the religious preferences of the customer (Chevy, Dodge Hemi, Ford) and such exotica as a V-10 or a diesel engine or remote starting can be accommodated.

And if, after a while, you feel you’ve outgrown the 400 horses, this particular engine is well catered for in the performance modification area, with Lunati camshaft, Milodon Gear drive, Holley and Edelbrock components to name a few, and there’s always the fuel injection option too, if you feel you need to throw the snow out of the county or ensure your seat in the “neighborhood blower blingster hall of fame.”

Here’s the link to the original gizmag article. Sorry for the off-topic post, but I couldn’t resist.

If you want to leave a comment please click the “Join the forum discussion on this post” link below to log into the forum topic tied to this post.

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Machines are expensive. Dust is abrasive. Don’t believe me? Go get that old motorcycle helmet that Aunt Beunice gave you for your 16^th birthday after you bought that 125cc Honda Combat Wombat with your paper route money. Yeah, the snazzy lime green one. See all that dust on the face shield? Give it a good rub and telephone me to tell me it didn’t scratch it up.

You keep your calipers and micrometers in a toolbox right? Those baseball cards that Grampa gave you go into his footlocker right? You keep your money in a bank right? So what do you do with your machinery? If you are like ninety nine percent of amateur machinists you let your machinery sit out in the open, unprotected, cold and lonely.

Next time you are using foul language to describe to a friend how your machine wouldn’t hold the tolerance you wanted it to, look back at how you treated the poor machine. You oughta be ashamed. Why would you put the bench grinder where it would spit abrasive particles onto the lathe? You mean you did woodworking in the same room as your metal machines are stored? Don’t you know that wood chips will soak up all the oil on those precision surfaces and make them rub together? The precision of your machinery is based on the wear that occurs to the ways and other sliding surfaces. So when you are done hanging your head, when your lip stops quivering, I will help you pay your penance. Even you can seek forgiveness at the chapel of the recovering machine abuser.

The only way to fix up your Karma is to make covers for your machinery. Yeah, a lathe cozy. This sounds dumb until you think about it. Like “Don’t run with the scissors,” sounded dumb until you either thought about it or found out why people told you that. This is the same, you can learn the easy way through logic or you can poo poo the idea and pay when your machines will no longer do what they should. I finally got sick of waiting for February 30^th which is when my wife said she would finish my equipment covers and asked her to show me how to sew fabric. This she was perfectly willing to do. It was not that hard to learn. We measured the extreme length, width and height of my Atlas horizontal milling machine and she made a sort of toaster cover shaped thing that fit like snot because the mill was not a perfect cube. Scratching my head I thought up a better way. That is what this article is about.

I took a cheap blue tarp and threw it over the mill. Everywhere there was looseness in the tarp got a row of pins. Eventually the tarp fit it snugly. I cut away all the excess tarp and cut nice and even around the base. Voila! We had made a pattern. We took it into the sewing room and laid cotton duck (fabric) down on the floor and laid the “pattern” over it. Dang! The fabric was too narrow. No Problem, We sewed on an extra ten inches and now it was wide enough. We pinned the pattern to the material, traced around it with a Sharpie marker and cut it out. She showed me how to sew the seams  which was WAY easier than I thought. I had her sew (hem) a piece of clothesline around the base of the cover and it was done. Yay! It fit all the curves and odd surfaces of the mill. It literally was a custom made cover.

Next came the Atlas 7-inch shaper. I decided to document the process and do all of it by myself.  Here are photos of the goofy shape that needed a cover

It is an ungainly thing to try to cover.

Under the tarp it looked like an ostrich trying not to be seen.

See that big flap ‘o nonsense hanging off the front? That is the excess we are trying to get rid of. Gathering all the excess material together then pinning it to isolate extra fabric leads to rows of straight pins pinching off whatever you want to get rid of like this.

Once the excess is pinned you can carve away the extra fabric OUTSIDE the pins with scissors leaving you something better looking like this.

Be sure to write on it before you take it off so that the outside is obvious. Otherwise the seams will show and your buddies will laugh even harder at you. When you trim away the bottom of the cover level with the floor it suddenly looks like a machine cover.

Now the pins can come out and you have a pattern. Lay this on the fabric you have chosen. You can see how I had to add material to get the width problem mentioned above solved.

Trace around the pattern and cut out the fabric. Sew up the seams and sew in the cord around the bottom. You now have custom fit machine covers. In this last photo you can see the incognito shaper on the left before the cord is sewn in around the bottom and the incognito milling machine on the right with the cord sewn in. The cord gives the cover a finished appearance so don’t be an idiot and leave it out.

That’s it! If you have a question or you want to leave a comment please click the “Join the forum discussion on this post” link below to log into the forum topic tied to this post.

- Barry

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This set of vintage plans was loaned to me by a friend who has had them for many (30+) years. The plans are for a “Six Inch Stroke Bench Crank Shaper” from the Pootatuck Corporation of Stratford Connecticut. However, I can’t seem to find any information about them online. The plans are old enough that I believe they are no longer protected under copyright. If this is not the case, please let me know and I will remove them.

Also, if anyone has any information about this shaper, including pictures or videos of a completed version of this shaper, please post them to the forum.

Which reminds me, for those of you who haven’t heard, projectsinmetal.com has a new forum! The new forum will allow users to communicate with each other more easily and provides a simple way for visitors to share pictures of their projects, ask and answer questions, etc. The forum is free, so please take a moment to register via the “Forum” tab at the top of the page.

One more thing, it looks as though someone used to supply castings for this shaper. If anyone is still supplying castings, please let us know by posting the information to the forum. If not, this might be a good casting project for the furnace my friend Barry is building. Also, if you’d be interested in buying castings for the shaper, please leave a comment below or on the forum.

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If you’re a clockmaker (or have some other need for cutting precision gears) and you don’t want to spend $8K on a quality Burgeon, take a look at Michel’s detailed plans. FYI, the plans are in French (for example, the index plate pin is called a “pointeau”), but that shouldn’t prevent anyone from being able to read the dimensions (which are metric).

“This is milling machine for clockmaking that I designed for use with a Dremel. This machine is based on a milling machine from the Bergeon company. The goal was not to duplicate the Bergeon design exactly, but rather to alter the design to allow for the use of a Dremel. A lightweight Dremel is easy to mount thus avoiding the need for a larger motor and pulley (like in the Burgeon design). On my site you will find photographs as well as the method of construction.

Also on my site there are other projects which might be of interest to your visitors: A quick change tool post that I designed which has proved to be very handy, as well as a stainless marking gauge, which was a very beautiful project to create.

-  Michel”

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This is pretty amazing. A Metal Gear Solid fan created a version of Solid Snake’s gun that shoots … Rubber Bands! I wish I could find plans for one of these! I’ve got the plans now! They aren’t exactly step-by-step, but they show details for the critical parts. It should be enough to get you started!

Here’s a video of the gun in action.

Here’s a video of the firing mechanism, and a bit of video showing how the gun was built.

And here are the plans, courtesy of James W. from the HSM forum. Thanks Jim! If anyone else has completed one of these, let me know – I’d love to post your project pictures. Also, if anyone has a more complete set of plans that includes 100% of the pieces, please let me know.

UPDATE: I found the site where this gun comes from, but it’s in Japanese. Here’s a few translated links to the construction process: Link1, Link2, as well as a link to some of the other guns they’ve done Here. The english translation is a bit shaky, but the links provide even more production information for anyone attempting to build one of these.

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