Heminway Kit

At the moment I am doing a job for my Son. He's like me & can't leave things alone. When he sold his Golf GTi he took off his air ride suspension that cost him a pretty penny.

Now he wants to fit it to a Skoda Felicia fun he is renovating. So I am making some adaptors for the Front shocks. These are out of heavy 65mm bar stock BDMS. I was worried about the stick out from the chuck & the weight on the little Super7. Ideally I would use a Steady rest, but do not have one. I have been carefully boring the centre out of the bar. Looking at the ones for sale for the Myford , I notice they do not have a very big internal diameter. Probably would be no good for the present project.

I have ordered a Hemingway Kit version Bore size up to 127mm. So now i know what my next youtube vid is going to be about. After the air ride vids of course.

I was going to make one from scratch. But I would have to buy most of the steel etc that would be needed. Have you seen the price of steel stock . So that was out of the question.

Has anyone made one or these.

Steve.

Edited By Steviegtr on 30/11/2022 23:14:21

i have not made the steady but I have made two other Hemingway kits and found them very good, though they tend to be a bit spare with billets for small parts and once or twice I had to use longer lengths of bar from my "stock".

The drawings and instructions are fine, with the proviso the latter tend to be based on their own development workshop so you might need or spot alternative routes to the same ends by your own workshop equipment. At least some of the instructions appear based on using a Myford or similar lathe.

The orthographic drawings are augmented with colour-rendered isometric views to help visualising the more subtle parts and the assemblies.

It must be 40years ago that I bought that kit, Steve

… I messed-up the slot in the hinge [doing the job at college evening classes], sulked and put it back in the box.

Tread carefully and you will probably do much better than I did

One day [assuming that I actually brought it with me] I might graft a new hinge-section onto the casting and maybe finish the job … who knows ?

I shall watch your video with interest !!

MichaelG.

A good project. The standard Myford steady is a bit wimpy at 50mm maximum capacity. I made one for my old Drummond -- cut from a piece of 25mm steel plate so good and solid -- and made it to take 80mm which is much handier without being too big for general use.

Thanks for that Michael. I have already spoke to a friend who has some very small caged roller bearings. I will probably use these instead of the Brass rubbing noses. Stupid thing is, I have nearly completed the project for my Son's suspension. Although it is something I have a few times wished I had. So all not in vain. I hope it goes as well as the Knurling tool project. But a bit quicker.

Steve.

You have confirmed my suspicions. The Myford one would have been too small. I should have the kit soon (Postmans strikes etc over here permitting) So will see what arrives.

Regards.

Steve.

Edited By Steviegtr on 01/12/2022 01:02:20

I'd be inclined to make both styles of support bars if possible.
The bronze ended ones will go down to a smaller diameter than many roller races, unless the latter are offset from each other.
Also, the steady might have other uses.
I bought a ready made one, almost the same, but to a slightly simpler design, and used it for holding the spindle head for re-machining the main spindle on a part completed Quorn grinder I picked up.
In this case, the steady held the outer casing of the spindle, so I could machine it in it's own bearings.
Effectively I was using the steady as a 4 jaw through vice, so didn't want the contents to turn.

Bill

I did wonder if making 2 sets or more would be an advantage. E.G the rods protrude out like knitting needles on the diagram. So some shorter ones for large diameter work would maybe better to have. Till it arrives I have no idea what to expect. Thanks for the advice though.

Steve.

I bought the castings a few years ago and I am very pleased with them, so far I have taken a light skim off both sides of the large casting and the ally cuts beautifully. Health issues prevented me doing any more but hopefully I will be back in the workshop soon. My only complaint is the crappy bit of M6 studding that was supplied in the kit, I shall screwcut my own.I need the large steady for machining a loco smokebox so must make it a priority as it’s holding thing up. I am surprised Myford didn’t make a larger version of their fixed steady, but looking at Colchester’s their steadies are fairly small capacity for the size of machine, they must have had their reasons.

Hi

I made the version for Myford 254+, the only difference from the 7 series is there is a spacer block to adjust the center height. It all went together well and the castings machined easily. I second the comment by Baz about the crappy bit of cheap zinc plated studding supplied with the kit, mine was corroded and looked horrible. I cheated and bought some very nice stainless studding. I also replaced some of the cheap and nasty fasteners that came with the kit, something I also had to do with the bending roll kit I made recently, probably just me being a bit fussy but it seems a shame to spoil the ship...

Mine is made with the standard brass tips and the extra capacity has proved very useful, great for smokeboxes and the like.

Dave

Stevie, I read an article in the last couple of years or so by a guy whose work is almost exclusively using steadies and he was not a fan of using bearings as he thought they were not friendly to the material and also affected the surface finish as a result.

There could be issues with swarf getting trapped between the roller and the job if bearings are used. Also if you do them up too tight, you are basically rolling the job between three hardened steel rollers, which can become a machining process in itself! Toolpost mounted rollers can be used to generate a very smooth shiny finish to a close tolerance.

I don't have any trouble with brass tipped steady fingers used on steel etc. But have never had occasion to try it on aluminium etc that would mark a bit easier. Trick is to keep plenty of oil on the fingers and don't do them up too tight. Contact and that is all.

I do remember seeing in one of the old books, Sparey possibly, the dodge of inserting a strip of cardboard or gasket jointing material between the fingers and the job and nipping the ends of the strip up between the top and bottom halves of the steady where they clamp together.

But as a project, making both options would be best of both worlds.

Edited By Hopper on 02/12/2022 01:29:59

Yes that is what i will probably do. But until it arrives i am not sure the way ahead.

Steve.

That's interesting. I will look further into that.

Steve.

With a bit of forward planning you could probably allow for both with a set of solid and another set of rollers, could even fit bronze "tyres" to the rollers if it was found that the hard bearings were marking the work.

Though I've been watching a few of CCE's videos recently and he seems happy to run rollers on the chrome rods that he does not want to mark and there is quite a bit of weight on his steadies such as in this video, watch for a couple of mins if you want to see some hot swarf!

Hi Jason , I watch all of kurtis's video's. He doeas some good stuff. The dog steals the show though. His wife is a dabhand at video editing too. Yes the plan was to make 2 sets & a good idea of making some broze tyres to the bearings. Cheers.

Steve.

I've adapted a standard steady to use small commercial bearings to use on some stainless printing press rollers that needed shortening. Worked well and left no marks on the polished surface, the only snag comes if any chips or swarf get between the roller and the shaft surface, a normal steady will usually just scrape the swarf along, but on one roller, owing to the rolling action of the bearing some chips caught between roller and shaft ruining the surface. The answer was to cut a fairly close fitting hole in a piece of thin card to go over the roller and tape it to the steady, making a shield between the lathe tool and steady, this worked well and enabled the dozen or so to be completed successfully. Hope the above is clear, found it difficult to explain in words!

I should perhaps explain that the steady was only used to face and centre the rollers after the length had been sawn down, the rest of the machining was done between centres, from memory the rollers were about 100mm dia.

Hi Steve, one thing about using rollers is that they really need to be parallel to each other and to the work, otherwise you could get skewing which will produce marks onto your work. The photo below shows a job I did about 18 years ago on a Colchester Mastiff 1600 80" bed lathe, this was about 300 Kg in weight. The steady was in the position where a 4" Plummer block bearing is fitted, so damage by scoring needed to be avoided, but it can be seen that the rollers polished the area where they were running, even though they were well oiled, the shaft was probably free cutting mild steel, although it could have been EN8, but no grooving could be detected after the job on both of the built-up rollers was finished.

Regards Nick.

Hi Steve. This is the fixed steady for my M Type Myford. It has bronze tipped bolts. The original bolts were all steel and they marked jobs and do made new bolts from EN16T with bronze tips, not brass as you can get wear. I have made larger bearing bearing faced steady tips for larger lathes but they won't support smaller items.

David

All the materials for the fingers is supplied with the kit. I will be surprised if the tip material is Broze. Probably be Brass.

Steve.