Square holes

Drill your hole, mark the square out carefully, stick it in the vice and hand file it to size with a square file and finish off with your three-sided file to get the corners nice and sharp. One hour's work, tops.

Depending on what size hole you are making, 10-inch files should shift the metal fairly quickly for you. You'll have it done before you would get the filing machine set up.

Another alternative is set it up in the lathe with a boring bar type tool with square corner on it and run the carriage back and forth like when doing slotting and gradually bring the tool out using cross slide. Use a small tool and do one corner at a time.

my tongue was rather in my cheek when i proposed blacksmithing methods, but it is a perfectly viable approach. re steel selection, absolutely, plain MS would do for both the drift and the spanner, but any form of hardening will prolong the life. Having said that, I'd probably prefer the spanner to wear than damage the machine it's being applied to. But when one starts to wear, the other probably will too.

russ

Russell

You said it with such a straight face, it was pretty convincing

If you are worried about square corners, mark out the sqare for the hole, and drill the corners, something like 2 or 3 mm, drill the center to full dia, file the sides of the square into the holes at the corners, done. Ian S C

I was missing the the tool from my Boxford shaper and made a square drive spanner the easy way. Simply bought a socket (any size) with a 3/8 inch square drive and welded / brazed that to a piece of cranked flat steel bar. Been using it for several years now.

Spanners done!

Used the shaper for the first time in anger in the process as well.

Photos uploaded.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Saxalby,

That solution never even crossed my mind.

Well, I did use the filing machine and the shaper with my approach, so I at least made a start in learning how to use them.

Geoff - I must must improve on my stick welding. It's horrid!