What shall I build to please the boss?

Tamper, thanks David. Another thing I made when I was wood turning was metal parts for wooden candle sticks.

Ian S C

Lol, me too. I'd just be making kitchen stuff for myself - mind you, I do need a better coffee tamper (thanks Ian for the suggestion), and I do have a big chunk of suitable brass bar sitting in the metal box................

The candlestick has won.

I'm quite pleased with it. It looks quite good (though I would do some things differently) and I learned a lot. Even more surprising was that i finished it early and in roughly the time I'd expected (which rarely happens in my Software life!)

The base is a 100mm x 50mm steel bar I had on hand, which I tapered with the topslide. That wasn't so good as the finish was quite poor and even hours with sandpaper haven't quite cleaned it up.

The stem is about 14 inches of 20mm steel tapered on an offset tailstock. This worked better as I'd tightened up the bearings and reverted from a indexed carbide cutter to self-ground HSS. Also slowed right down to 200 rpm or less.

The bud at the top is my first attempt at making brass scurf and it's worked quite well (I've kept the scurf in the event I ever do some casting).

I spent most of my machine time polishing the parts with grades of sandpaper from 120 down to 5000, but I'm still not happy with the finish in all places. It's pretty good but not quite mirror and I'm not sure how to get the last little bit of quality.

Madam seemed a bit bemused by the whole business but it is generally recognised as being a thing. I think she quite likes and is a bit impressed by it but the idea of me making something useful has to filter into her mind.

Gives me a year to work on some other thing to make.

Iain

Iain