Member postings for Sonic Escape

When I'm to tired to focus on doing something more complex I enjoy restoring old tools. Not because I need them. I find it a relaxing activity. Here are some tools that I picked a few weeks ago from a flea market.

The first picture is before pouring vinegar to remove the rust. The plier was the first that got my attention:

I used only the angle grinder with a round rubber adapter. You can put on it round sandpaper discs. I used 4 types with grit from 120 to 800. I think I'll spray some clear varnish to keep it shiny.

This is the caliper after removing it from vinegar. It is completely jammed. Not even WD40 didn't hep. I had to use the vise to unlock it.

Edited By Sonic Escape on 21/06/2023 23:46:03

I finished boring a hole in the 10mm plate. Despite all my efforts I managed to make it some 0.18mm larger. I was making very fine cuts, I don't know how this happened. I think I need a telescopic gage. Now when I put the bar inside it has a small play and I don't like it.

So I consider to move to plan B. I think a taper will make the design less sensitive to exact dimensions.

Also I ordered this thing. I think it is called annular cuter. On the lathe I'll make only a 4-6mm hole to mark the right spot and then I'll move the plate on the press drill and cut a 22mm hole with that special drill. That will be large enough to insert the boring tool to make it larger.

Edited By Sonic Escape on 19/06/2023 16:18:15

The workpiece feels very secured in the chuck and I'm using a low speed. Also I'm standing more on the right side than usually when working with this plates.

As for the aggressive cut, I'm going to use this arrangement. I would be happy if I could make a cut at all
There are adapters for this boring tools but I didn't figured out which type is required by my tool.

Here Milwaukee discs are in the same price range with Bosch and others. Around half a pound. What is really expensive is a Cubitron II from 3M. I wonder how that one is cutting because it is six times more expensive!

Nigel Graham 2
Distorting the bar by welding is not an issue because anyway I will turn it later. I also thought initially about a more elaborated method to make a dog. But welding produced a more rigid result. Even this "dog" was bend a little in the end.

not done it yet
True, but I don't have to reverse the part. I want only to decrease the diameter at both ends with a chisel style tool. The motor has 1.5kW S1. Up to 1.8kW @ 460V. I saw that some chop saws have motors up to 3kW. But I will give this one a try. I will use the VFD from the lathe, so I can adjust very easy the speed. The motor has 1400RPM. So with a 1:1 belt drive I should have the maximum speed recommended for carbide discs.

Today I finished the work on the pin. I decrease the diameter by ~10mm at both ends. I made an interesting discovery. If I'm using oil, the cutting tool is rubbing the metal, accumulate tension and then suddenly starts to cut a large chunk of metal. You can see this at 0.42:

I also killed the dog because its job was done.

Next I wanted to made the holes for the pin in the 10mm plates. I fixed the plate in the chuck like this. And turned it very slow, 70-80rpm maybe. I also avoided to stay too close to it.

I discovered that I can't drill holes larger than 10mm. I need 1mm more to fit the boring tool inside to start to enlarge the hole. I should have a 12mm drill but I can't find it. I have also 16mm drill but I lost the ER32 collet for that size! And my giant MT3 drill is 2mm too large. Bad luck today. Time to do some shopping.

Here is the proof that I need a chop saw. This cut was supposed to be made along the line, but I couldn't see it well because of the sparks ...

One last thing, this Milwaukee discs are cutting much faster that anything I tried before. It looks like a good brand.

Edited By Sonic Escape on 18/06/2023 20:52:01

I'm building a chop saw for metal and I was thinking to share here the progress. It is going to use discs up to 350mm. I want to be very solid. I have this 3-phase motor for it:

Today I started to make a large pin. It will hold together the base of the saw and the mobile part (motor + disc). So I'm making some kind of hinge. I have many 10mm thick 55x100mm metal plates that I'm going to use them for this. Bellow is a quick drawing.

I wanted to turn the pin between centers. But I don't want to remove the chuck. So I cheated and I made a center and hold it in the chuck. As long as I don't remove it the concentricity should be perfect.

My lathe is not aligned so I used a precision rod to measure the error. After adjusting the tailstock I reduced the error to <10 microns.

I don't have a dog. So I welded a small piece of flat steel to one end of the bar. I'll remove it later.

After cutting around 1mm in total I discovered to my surprise that the diameter of the bar is 0.2mm larger at the right end! So the tailstock is seriously misaligned. There was something wrong with my first attempt to aligned the centers. I moved the tailstock with 0.1mm closer to me. And after another 0.3mm cut the diameter difference at the ends dropped to 7 microns! So far so good.

Edited By Sonic Escape on 17/06/2023 20:20:11

Today I burned a multimeter. I found a nice 3-phase motor for a chop saw projects that I'm working on and I wanted to test it with the lathe's VFD. The EMI was so severe that the multimeter switched from VAC to mA DC!

An this was the result inside:

Until now it was my favorite multimeter, but now it disappointed me.

What you mean by picking up? I have no special reason to use stainless steel. It's just the most abundant material I have.

How? I was never able to tack parts precisely while welding. The dilatation force is very strong. Here is even more difficult, aligning two cylinders half a meter apart.

Edited By Sonic Escape on 30/05/2023 21:42:07

Yes, they have metric screw

About the price, this things were never cheap. Even now a new model can cost up to 50 euro for the large variant. Meanwhile I'm trying to fix the screw. It is not straight.

I'm slowly turning the vise since morning. At least when I'm remembering. I'm afraid to don't break the part if I bend it to quickly. I don't know what kind of cast iron was used.

The thing should work like a hinge. I want to make a chop saw for cutting metals with a carbide blades. It is a long story, first I was thinking on a table saw, then a band saw and finally I choose this.

Red and green are the parts connected by the hinge. One is the base of the saw and the other is the part that holds the motor + blade. Blue is the stainless steel bar. And with yellow are the parts that should fit close over the blue bar. The small yellow parts at both end should hold the bar in place with a set screw. The length of the bar is 50cm.

Now I realized that I could never weld the yellow parts aligned without the blue rod in place. And the rod will get stuck if welding deforms the parts. So a reamer/hone would not help here. The only solution that I could think now is to weld the yellow parts on small plates, but it is becoming to complex.

Edited By Sonic Escape on 30/05/2023 21:12:13

What is a hone? Some kind of reamer?

I want to make two plain bearings. And some kind of locking ring. They will rotate only 90°, from time to time. So friction is not an issue. Since I don't have how to make a pillow block I want to weld the bearing directly. Welding will modify it's internal diameter? I can't turn it on the lathe to fix it after it is welded.

I couldn't resist not to turn it a little

I wasn't sure how thick is the wall so I didn't cut too deep. Then I painted it with rust converter:

But it didn't turned very black because there wasn't enough rust left:

So this means that it can't be disassembled without destroying it?

This was a common type of adjustable wrench in Romania. They are called "French wrench" here. But actually it was made in Romania. There were 3 sizes, this one is the middle one. When working fine it is my favorite wrench. They feel very solid and you can use it also as a mini vise or to clamp things.

When I was a child I used it to crack nuts. Unlike a pair of pliers, the nuts didn't crush too much.

I never used vinegar to remove rust. I think I'll give it a try. Does it matter if it has a lot of grease inside?

This is how the three variants looks like. The last one to the right is a different model.

Edited By Sonic Escape on 28/05/2023 15:01:48

Edited By Sonic Escape on 28/05/2023 15:04:28

I bought today an old adjustable wrench. I want to see if it can be restored. But I can't figure out how to disassemble the part from the right. The top part is rotating and I don't see nothing inside that holds it. Could it be just pressed somehow in the handle?

Assuming I have a flat surface (yellow) if I slide the workpiece (blue) over it and I grind thin layers with the red grinding wheel that is fixed relative to the surface, then the flatness should be transfer to the workpiece, right? There is a machine that works in this way but I don't know how it is called.

I think Vevor is an interesting combination of achieving low cost by sacrificing quality control. Unless there is an serious defect I prefer to pay less and have some fun fixing stuff. This table fits very well in this category. Thank you for the link, I didn't realized that restoring ways is such a popular activity

I don't have a flat surface but now I'm thinking on some options. They are so expensive! Even without considering the shipping cost. I think I will need some kind of reference. I can make the ways parallel but I want them to be parallel also with the top of the table.

I have one of this milling table. It is not too expensive but it requires some modifications. First when it arrived it was covered with a stinky grease and I had cu clean it. I also repainted it.

The first serious problem is with the left/right screw. It has a washer (see the yellow arrow) that rests on a shoulder that is not tall enough. I'm not sure how to explain better. But the result of this is that for every rotation of the wheel there is a point where it gets stuck. Bellow you can see what happens when I rotate the screw while keeping the green part pressed on the workbench. It is moving the two Allen keys.

Here is a picture where this can be seen better:

I have 2 very large washers so I welded one exactly where that shoulder is. I didn't have a better idea.

Unfortunately during the welding the washer moved a little. So I had to put the screw on the lathe and cut the washer to make it square to the screw. Now it is much better. The wheel doesn't get stuck anymore.

I removed the gib of the bottom slide and I noticed that there is a play of about 1mm. The sliding surfaces are not parallel. I'm not sure how to to fix this. Or if there is an easy fix. Anybody has any ideas?