Hemingway Hacksaw

Hello all,

I'm new to the forum, but have been watching for quite a while whilst deciding if to take the plunge and tool up for a while.

What caught my interest was the 'clickspring' series of videos on YouTube, and whilst I'm not really interested in clocks much, I found the making of your own tools fascinating.

Having decided to have a go, I've bought myself a mill first. One of the reasons is because this is the bit of kit that I've never used (used a lathe at school back in the 80s) the other reason is because I want to get some practice with it, before purchasing a lathe.

Having purchased the mill, and a DRO kit, the first project was a set of brackets for the DRO. I've done the X and Y axis, but I got held up over Christmas waiting for some m4 X 60 screws for the Z axis.

As I'd bought the Hemingway kit before Christmas, I thought I would make a start on the milling tasks, starting with the vice.

A few photos of progress so far:

I also made up some clamp plates to mount the vice riser to the table, so I could skim off the bottom of the casting:

Cheers

Mark

Edited By Neil Wyatt on 07/01/2018 21:28:29

Hello Mark

Welcome to the forum! Good to see your progress with your Hacksaw, I've made a few items from the Hemingway catalogue and have always found their kits to be of good quality with well detailed plans and build instructions. Hopefully you will keep posting with updates as you progress!

Regards Martin.

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the welcome. 👍

I've been undecided how to approach this riser casting, as the sides are not square, in that they slope towards the bottom, it makes holding them in the vice a no go. I've formulated the plan to make a plate and thread it and use the plate to clamp in the vice. Now that I've skimmed the bottom, I've made the countersinks 1mm too deep, I'm planning to fly cut the top then I can machine out the underside for the vice nuts to slide along, using the same plate.

We will see how this pans out. I'm enjoying the learning process.

Cheers

Mark

Welcome to the forum Mark.

I'm surprised more people don't start with a mill, especially if they are from a 'maker' background and happy to use bought in shafts, bearings etc..

Neil

Thanks Neil,

Here's my first attempt at fly cutting the work holding plate:

I had to run the mill in reverse for this, as I'd made the stupid mistake of sharpening the wrong edge of the HSS blank and the only grinder I have is at work.

Cheers

Mark

And some people ask,"do I really need reverse", for that alone you'v found a reason Mark, that looks good.

Ian S C

Good work.

I'm looking forward to following this build.

Good luck!

Jim

Hi Ian,

Many thanks for your kind comments.

I've come up against my first issue with the plan. Neither the bottom or the top of the casting was flat to start with, and that bottom face in the photo above isn't flat. I can only assume that my clamping it to the table pulled the top of the casting flat to the table, but in the process, pulled the bottom out of true and when I released the clamps, the casting sprang back out of square.

I'm thinking of continuing with the plate idea and packing up the underside of the casting to the plate, so that I can true up the top, then it can be bolted to the table again and have the bottom machined flat.

Fortunately, there is about 4 mm to come off the casting, so there is plenty for me to play with.

Cheers

Mark

Interesting comment Neil " I'm surprised more people don't start with a mill" In the early days of ME, hardly anyone had a mill and if milling were required, then it was done in the lathe. I probably use my lathe 10 x more than my mill.
BobH

Perhaps back in the early days, shapers (particularly Adepts?) were, by far, the cheaper option over a relatively expensive milling machine. Also hobby machinists were possibly more ‘manual’ than the modern versions, back in those days, so were not averse to lots of filing?

I am finding I use my mills far more than my lathe these days. It maybe wasn’t always the case.

Edited to add that milling cutters were likely too expensive for most hobbyists and single point cutters were cheap in comparison, but limited in use on a small mill?  Lathe and drill were almost equivalent to a mill?

Edited By not done it yet on 08/01/2018 16:43:29

Today, I realised the mistake with the fly cutter, I had ground it correctly, I somehow managed to fit it in the arbour 90 degrees out. 😁

Every day is a school day at the moment. With a bit of WD40 as lube and the cutter in the right way round, using the speed detailed in the other post that's about at the moment (10000 divided by sweep in MM), this was the result:

I'm pretty happy with that. Lots of firsts here, first go at fly cutting, first go a week or two ago at tramming the mill and first go at off hand grinding a cutter.

Now I can get on and finish off this holding plate.

Cheers

Mark

Nice!

Keep up the good work!

Jim

Thanks Jim 👍

Got the plate made up and used transfer punches to mark out the holes. Drilled and tapped M6 and got the riser mounted up so that I can face off the top. As I said before, there is about 4mm to come off the height of this.

It's nice and solid in the vice, but I'm still only taking about .25mm off at a time. I also need to extend those countersinks so that I don't end up hitting the cap screws.

Cheers

Mark

Got a bit of time this afternoon, so I broke out the 4mm cutter and brought the slot to size. One of the things that I'm finding annoying about the drawings is that they are a mish mash of imperial and metric. Anyway, I was aiming for 1"

That looks close enough.

Cheers

Mark

Mills are suited to very different types of work.

My shunter was dominated by milling, partly because I made parts like the wheels from the solid.

My stationary engines have all be done largely on the lathe, but I use the mill more and more these days. Mills are also better suited to CNC.

I suspect that if most people had mills and not lathes, typical work would be very different.

Neil

Turned over on the holding plate and the slides machined down to 6.35mm

I still need to take another couple of mm off the bottom to bring it to final dimension, so I'm going to drill and tap the holder M10 to take my clamps shown earlier.

Cheers

Mark

I had a change of plan with the holder, I decided to slot it out to take the T nuts I have plus the clamps I made up.

I can now buzz that down to final dimension and the riser is done.

Cheers

Mark

I got a bit ahead of myself with the 'riser is done' statement. I still need to drill and ream out the holes for the vice screw and drill and tap 1/2 BSF for the stop rod. All of the holes need spot facing 3/4 (I much prefer to work in metric, but I'm getting used to swapping between the two now)

Here is the first hole drilled 10mm and spot faced to what should be 19.05mm (I got carried away with the boring bar and it ended up 19.65mm) oops. At least it doesn't really matter as it is just used as a face for the lock nut to seat on.

As I don't have a 11.1mm drill and the taps I ordered at the weekend haven't arrived yet, thats it for a day or two.

Cheers

Mark

Drills and taps turned up today, so I drilled out the hole to 11.1mm and got to work with the 1/2 BSP tap.

I need to do the same to the other side and then drill and team out the holes for the Vice Screw.

Cheers

Mark

I’m still slowly plodding along with milling jobs on this project. I’ve found it a great learning experience. (Tapping drill for M10 x 1.5 is 8.5 not the 9.5 that I drilled with😬

Apart from silly mistakes like above, it’s coming together.

It’s not going to be long now before I can go no further without a lathe, so I’m getting ready for that purchase.

Cheers

Mark