Member postings for John Reese

Cast iron works best with a neutral rake or negative rake tool. I suggest HSS so you can get a square corner at the spigot.

Cast iron works best with a neutral rake or negative rake tool. I suggest HSS so you can get a square corner at the spigot.

For those who do not want to grind their own tools there is a product called ThinBit.

If you are set up for 5C collets you can use a5C pot chuck.

Robin,

half round drills are essentially the same as D bits except for the length of flat.

Duncan,

This American has little respect for the American Tubal Cain.

Check Clickspring's videos for his method of hardening using borax to eliminate scaling. There used to be anti-scale products available in small lots. MSC lists this:

**LINK**

In one of his videos Dan Gelbart describes using a methanol drip into his furnace to maintain an ideal atmosphere for hardening.

Years ago I had a job of modifying a lot of primer cups for older John Deere engines. I had to open the hole through the stopcock. I bought half round drills rather than risk twist drills pulling into the work. It worked beautifully. The drills came from MSC. They still offer them.

Stainless rope is ill suited for applications involving winch drums or running over pulleys. It has a poor fatigue life in those applications.

I got called once. It was a dram shop suit. I told the judge I was a recovering alcoholic. I was told I could go home. My wife served on a jury once. She fell asleep during the trial. She was sent home.

There are several You Tube videos showing methods of preventing head rotation on round column mills. Check them out.

The Draper looks like a much more rigid machine than the Seig. While less convenient than a variable speed machine the Draper's step pulleys give you mare available torque at low speed than you can get with variable speed drives. The Draper is also fitted with a DRO. The downside of the Draper is the round column. If you have to raise the head you lose x-y position.

A wider root like 60* will give a bit more strength at the root as would a radius. Unfortunately many taps are ground to a sharp point which exacerbates the problem of breakout. A UNJ tap or the metric equivalent will give the greatest root strength. Check the length of screw engagement to see if that is a contributing factor, ie, insufficient engagement.

Large flat contact tips are readily available and quite inexpensive. It is hardly worth making one. Check with MSC.

Contact tips are available up to 2" dia.

Starrett back plunger indicators had a male thread on the plunger. The kit included an adapter so standard 4-48 indicator tips could be used. The back plunger kit came with 2 female thread tips that fit the plunger.

Free-hand grind a piece of 1/8" or 3/6" HSS. Take a piece of 1/2" silver steel. Mill or saw & file a slot in the end to fit the tool bit so the top of the bit is on centerline. Silver braze the bit into the slot. Use a cutoff wheel to remove any of the bit sticking out the back of the shank. Contour the back of the shank so there are no projections.

It is easier to grind a long bit than a short one. Keep the bit full length until it is ground to the right contour.

You will probably have to wind the tool back to the beginning as there may not be enough clearance to simply withdraw the tool. It depends on the amount of bit stickout.

You can simplify tool grinding if you angle the the trailing edge of the bit to the flank angle. Then only the leading edge of the bit need be ground. Of course that requires the slot in the silver steel be at the same angle.

From Clickspring videos: clear lacquer thinned by half.

This explanation is going to be a bit simplistic. For any given pitch the thread thickness at the pitch line is the same regardless of the flank angle. That thickness represents the area in shear that resists stripping of the thread. Actually the total shear are is the tooth pitch line thickness multiplied by the length of the pitch line helix for the length of thread engagement. That length will be identical for a given diameter and pitch. The flank angle of the thread will make little, if any, difference in stripping force for the same length of engagement.

I believe he sold his shop to another company. He was employed by them for a while. That is from memory. I would have to reciew his later videos to be sure.

Most brass tubing I have seen was hard drawn. Annealing would be in order before bending. The radius of the bend looks large enough to allow bending without the need for filling with sand, ice, Woods metal, etc. As the radius of the bend is not specified tbis is my best guess.