Barry Young (author of the “Norman Newguy” column) walks us through the various stones he keeps in his tool box. His stones range from rare Hard Arkansas to cheap dollar store stones. Barry not only discusses different stones and their uses, he also explains how to flatten badly worn stones, how to tell natural stone from man-made, etc. He also gives us his recommendation for the first stone a hobby machinist should buy.
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.
I recently rented “Operating an Atlas Horizontal Milling Machine” by Rudy Kouhoupt from SmartFlix and I wanted to take a moment to review the video.
Topic: Operating a Horizontal Milling Machine (Atlas MFC) Level: Beginner Format: DVD (2.5 hours)
Overall I think the video is definitely worth renting, especially for anyone who owns an Atlas mill, or anyone who is new to horizontal mills in general. However, more advanced machinists might find parts of the video a bit slow.
There are two projects included in the video. A saw arbor and a clamp block (basically a fixture plate) – both are of Rudy’s design. Plans for both projects are included with the video and Rudy spends the second half of the video showing how to make the clamp block step-by-step.
ProjectsInMetal readers can now sign up for Machinist University through SmartFlix and get the first month free! That’s a $23 value. There is no obligation and you can cancel at any time. I’ve been renting from SmartFlix for a few years now and I have never had anything other than positive experiences. Click on the link above or the image below for details.
My lathe’s tailstock has a lot of backlash (.006), a short throw (1.500), and sixty graduations (a number that has never made any sense to me). I’ve always found it difficult to drill to accurate depths.
For example, 0.875 divided by .060 equals how many rotations of the tailstock handle? It’s ridiculous to me that I need to do math (even simple math) just to drill a hole to a depth of 0.875. If my tailstock had 100 graduations things would be a lot easier … but it doesn’t. It has 60.
60? Really?
Now, about the backlash. I know what you’re thinking. Who cares about backlash in a tailstock? Apparently I do. My psychiatrist and I are working on that …
And yes I realize that 99.9% of the time the depth of a hole isn’t a critical dimension – but I’d still wanted more control and accuracy out of my tailstock.
At least, that was the case. But no longer! With the exception of the short throw all the other issues with my tailstock were resolved with one simple stop that you can easily make in an evening.
This project is very simple. The only thing that I can see tripping someone up is remembering to create thread relief for the cap screw. When you drill and tap for the 1/4-20 cap screw, you’ll want to also drill a .250 thread relief to the halfway point (where the slitting saw will eventually cut) so that the dial stop is only threaded on one of the two sides. If you thread both sides the two sides won’t draw together when you tighten the cap screw.
I didn’t draw up plans because of the simplicity of the project and because each person will need to scale the project up or down to fit the size of their lathe. I did, however, make a build video. Let me know what you think!
If you make your own please post pictures on the forum.
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