Member postings for Philip Rowe

If anyone is interested Find my Past have free access to all their census records 1841 - 1911 for the duration of this weekend. Findmypast.co.uk

Sorry don't know how to do a link. Phil

When I machined my tailstock turret castings recently I used a magnet under a piece of paper towel, this saved a considerable amount of cast iron dust from scattering around but as Howard says doesn't totally eliminate it. What amazed me when I came to do the final clean of the lathe was how far the dust travels. I stand on duck boards in front of my lathe and when I lifted them to clean underneath the floor was black from the dust with very little other swarf.

Phil

Having finished the turret a few days ago I've realised that I've not been keeping this thread up to date, so to continue.

I assembled the turret and mounted it in the tailstock and utilising the spring detent l was then able to rotate the front casting to pilot drill the six holes required for the tool holders.

Having opened these holes up to 3/8" reaming size l discovered that my only machine reamer of that size was blunt on the tip, for a hole only 5/8" deep a sharp one was paramount, so I had to wait a few days whilst a new one was ordered. Note to self - check these things beforehand!

The final machining operation on the casting was to drill the six holes on the periphery for the locking screws that will retain the various adapters and toolholders. This was done with my rotary table mounted vertically on the drilling machine.

Having tapped the locking screws holes, the turret was then reassembled and fitted with some of the adapters/ tool holders that I'd previously made for the final photo.

Having spent all this time making this turret l really wonder how much use it's going to get, but that aside it has been a very interesting exercise although I'm not impressed by how much time I've had to spend since in stripping and cleaning the lathe to remove all the cast iron dust.

Phil

Here you can see the rotating casting mounted on the rotary table on the drilling machine to have the six detent holes drilled. If anyone is wondering, the cords each side of the drill column is my crude method of counterbalancing the weight of the drill table. Its something that I rigged up in a hurry probably 30 + years ago and have never got round to improving but as they say "if it ain't broke don't fix it ". As you can probably imagine the drill table, rotary table and the casting being drilled all cast iron is quite a weighty lump to manoeuvre around, so I was quite glad of the counterbalance no matter what it looks like.

Looks very much the same as the charging lead on my Karcher window vac, but of course that's only low voltage. Is there any chance a standard figure of 8 lead would fit? I think they are called C7.

Phil

The next stage was to make a mandrel to mount the rotating casting on to machine the reverse side. This was made from a chunk of 1 1/4" b.m.s. which when this duty is finished will be modified to become the securing bolt that holds the two castings together.

As I had turned the mandrel to be a very close fit in the bore of the casting i was more then pleased when I could not detect any runout of the casting when it was reversed to finish the machining.

Next will be the drilling of the detent holes on the rotary table.

Phil

Another thing I've just noticed is the screw thread indicator is not original nor the mandrel lubricators. The thread indicator could have been an accessory added later but in those days most alingment for thread cutting was done with chalk marks on the change gears. The lubricators look as if they are from a later lathe, I know my ML2 which was purchased new by my father in 1936/7 had brass flip top oilers and all the other lubrication points were just holes in the castings, although the holes were picked out with red paint!

Phil

Looks to me like a ML1 as it has an all in one bed and headstock casting, the fitted chuck is in my opinion oversized for the poor spindle. Otherwise a good start for you to learn about turning, don't be tempted to over tighten the headstock bearing housing the casting can easily crack, don't ask how l know this. My first lathe was an ML2 very similar to yours the main difference being separate headstock and bed castings and I do remember the serial number was L277.

Phil

I was originally going to show this photo in my thread on building the tailstock turret but I feel it's more relevant here. With this casting at 4" in diameter the chances of finding a clamp type knurling tool are pretty remote, so l decided to do a straight push in knurl with the tool held in the tool post. Even with the lathe in slowest back gear the knurling wheel was whizzing round far too fast, so I reverted to a handle in the lathe mandrel and turned it as slowly as possible. Now I am aware of the strain that knurling puts on a lathe but I had no idea how much until I was knurling this casting, I could feel the strain being imposed on the bearings and how difficult it was to turn the feed screw to increase the depth of knurl, not least of all the difficulty in turning the mandrel handle. Ideally I would have liked to have had a deeper knurl but I just didn't want to put the lathe under any more strain. I realise that this is perhaps an extreme example but it's opened my eyes as to how much strain knurling can place on our hobby sized machines. Phil.

So the next stage with this turret is machining the rotating casting, a great deal of head scratching and thought was required to enable me to machine this and maintain concentricity where it matters. The raw casting was mounted in the three jaw chuck using the outside jaws and the outer face of the casting was machined to size, the 20 degree tapered section was a minor problem as swinging the top slide round to achieve the angle meant the feed handle was fouling on the cross slide, so I had to remove the handle and replacing it with a convenient piece of scrap to enable me to rotate the feed screw. The part of the casting underneath the jaws that can't be machined at this stage will be removed later as concentricity is not important here as this area is just knurled to provide a finger grip.

The next stage was reasonably easy, the casting was drilled about 10mm dia and then opened out to finished size with a boring bar, there was a lot of spring in the bar so multiple passes at each setting were required before finishing with a 1/2" reamer.

The piece of paper towel has a weak magnet behind it to collect the worst of the iron dust but l won't be sorry when all the machining of the castings is finished it really is messy stuff!

Phil

Silver solder every time. Whenever in the past I have soft soldered nipples I have always regretted it as they inevitably fracture/break. Phil

Since I switched to using spotting drills instead of centre drills, I have found that they also make excellent countersink bits with no chatter at all.

Phil

The next step in machining the static casting. The casting was mounted on an small angle plate on the cross slide for drilling the tapping size for the 7/16"BSF hole but I've just found that I omitted to take a photo of that operation! Next I bolted the casting to a larger angle plate set at 20 degrees to give the required angle for MT2 arbor that whole assembly will eventually be mounted on and spotted the hole ready for drilling prior to boring.

After opening out the hole with drills to about 1/2" the chuck was removed and replaced with my boring head, I used this with a suitably ground tool bit to act as a facing cutter. Because of the interrupted cut across the boss this was quite a delicate operation, but eventually I was happy with the surface finish. I'm afraid that I chickened out of screw cutting a blind hole in the boss and I've decided to secure the arbor to the casting using a high strength loctite, I'm quite confident that this will be satisfactory for the type of usage that I will be putting the tailstock turret to. Putting the boring head to it's more usual function the hole was opened up to the finish size of 5/8". Again i forgot to get a photo of the actual operation and the following is a posed shot taken later.

Curiously enough l used my v version for the first time yesterday, I've had it close on 50 years and never had occasion to use it until now. I needed a couple of cross holes in a piece of 15mm dia stainless which was too big for my cross hole drilling jig, I only used a centre drill with the drill pad and then transferred the job to the drill press where I was able to clamp it securely for drilling the 6mm hole. TBH I was feeling quite apprehensive whilst using it but it did work OK.

Phil

Well at long last I've made some progress, I took what some may regard as a not very satisfactory route but it has worked. I held the casting in the three jaw, drilled and tapped 3/8" BSF and machined a flat land for an arbor to mate to.I then turned the casting around and mounted it on the arbor (turned from a chunk of 3/4" bar) very gingerly faced the casting and turned the O/D to size using carbide insert tooling. Because of the initial interrupted cuts, depth of cut was only 10 - 15thou but once the cut was continuous I was taking cuts of around 30thou, the casting was well over size and consequently there was a lot of material to remove. Boring out the recess was just repetitious as I didn't want to push my luck and at 5/16" deep 30thou cuts take quite a while and also very messy, frequent stops to clear away the cast iron dust but it turned out OK in the end. One thing did surprise me was how little effort was required to unscrew the casting off the mandrel, with all the interrupted cuts when initially machining l thought that it would be really jammed on tight but my fears were unfounded.

Will post more when I have progressed further.

Phil

Had mine (Oxford A/Z) last weekend, ache in the arm for a few hours but two days later a serious shortage of breath that lasted for about 8 hours. At one point considered phoning 111 but it eventually subsided and I've been fine since, the other half just suffered mild flu type symptoms for a day or so.

Phil

Oh wow, what a plethora of suggestions I'm not sure where to begin. I'm going to spend some time with my tablet in the workshop running through these ideas to decide which way forward. I had thought that I could do the problem machining on my vertical mill with a boring head but the set up again is problematic. Initially I liked Frank's idea of a purpose made mdf packing piece but the problem here is any kind of clamp to secure the casting will prevent the machining from taking place.

I also thought that a chucking spigot would be a simple solution but obviously not much help to me with this particular casting, I don't believe that this kit is still made l bought it at a club auction about 30 years ago and all I know about it is what is printed on the drawing ie. designed by Sparey in conjunction with the Model Maker magazine and I believe that that magazine is long since defunct, but maybe someone here has more information on that.

I will be keeping this going as a build thread but please don't expect rapid updates as my workshop time is limited and I never work that quickly at the best of times.

Phil

Edited By Philip Rowe on 05/02/2021 12:19:06

I hope this photo shows how the spigot is too large to allow the casting to be held in the chuck jaws.

The photo is a posed shot with the tool holder holding the casting against the chuck.

I am currently thinking that when this turret kit was designed and offered for sale very few ME workshops would have had milling machines and large lathes, so there must be a way of doing it using a typical 3 1/2" lathe but at the moment I can't see it, so any help very much appreciated.

Phil

Jeff, thanks for your input but the problem is with your step 1. Because of the size of the spigot it is impossible to mount the casting in a chuck, unless it is a very large one. Certainly l can't using my 3 or 4 jaw chucks (Myford sizes) l will post a photo later to illustrate the problem, when domestic tasks are finished!

Phil

As I'm going to build this i thought I might just as well document it as it may be of interest to others. I decided to start with the body casting as it is the trickiest then the rest must be easy! However, I've hit a snag before I've even started and that is how to hold the casting for machining. If you look at item 2 on the drawing the left hand face needs to be machined and a 2" register bored with a 3/8" tapped hole right through. I can't hold it in a chuck because of the spigot on the rhs is too large to allow the casting to sit in the jaws of the chuck.

I could hold the casting in the chuck and drill and tap 3/8" from the spigot side of the casting and then mount it on a threaded mandrel, then carrying out the various machining in the lathe but I'm concerned as whether a 4" diameter casting hanging on a 3/8" mandrel is pushing my luck a it too far. It can be seen in the top left of the drawing is a suggested method of holding the casting for machining the spigot, but that's not much help for what I'm trying to do. Any advice and suggestions will be most welcome. Phil