All work
on this website (& in my workshop) is temporarily on hold, while I recover
from hand surgery - Sorry.
Anti Spam
Introduction.
'Steves Toolworks'
is my hobby page. It's shows the current status of my home workshop and any projects
I have (or am) making. These pages are regularly updated &
added to, so it might be worth checking back occasionally to see what's new. You
can SMS or phone me (in Australia) on 0415 615 435.
Note: Only this first page has few pictures. Making download faster, when you're seeing what's new - done for your convenience .
I indulged myself by putting a photo here (I don't normally look this
smart, but it was my daughters wedding & I was under executive orders).
I live in Western
Australia (between Perth & Rockingham). I've wanted my own hobby metal workshop since school
days (1960's, Canterbury, UK) - finally made it, 40ish years later. My health doesn't let me spend
as much time in my workshop as I'd like each
week, but I enjoy the time I have here. It's a ßüĝĝêŕ getting
older isn't it. Wouldn't it be nice if a days work was a full days work - not just an
hours work taking all day. Still, it's for the fun of it
& time isn't money any more.
Wherever possible I
re-use
old scrap for projects. Partly for financial reasons
(I'm a disability pensioner), and partly the challenge of recycling good
materials. Examples are my Mandrel Handle
($0.50),
Leadscrew Hand Dial ($0) for the lathe, homemade Edge Finder
($0) for the mill-drill.
My aim isn't to give detailed plans,
(everybody's needs will differ). I want to show how I did it, sharing guidelines, ideas & inspiration, for the benefit of
other hobby machinists & model engineers. Given a need & a little lateral thinking, many things are
possible with limited equipment & resources.
If these pages give the
encouragement to try making, before rushing out & buying, it's
not just good financial saving, but gives considerable self-satisfaction - all the
while
becoming a more proficient machinist. It's the trying that's important,
as any failures are also valuable lessons.
I will concede, when
starting to build a workshop, a certain amount of items are purchased, just
to get a head start. As the workshop builds in sophistication, less needs to be
bought & more can feasibly be made yourself. i.e.: even if you
intend making most of your special milling cutters, it's expedient to have a
small commercially made set available for making them. I'm sure anyone who's
tried to make machine tool cutters from scratch, by hand, will agree
with me on this.
Unfortunately, not
everything homemade works as planned. I once made a 3/8-24 UNF tap,
hardened & tempered - it looked great - it's a pity the metal wasn't high carbon steel (which I'd believed it to be). The first time I tried to use it all the teeth stripped
off & the straight flutes made a beautiful spiral. It's now totally
useless, but looks very artistic. Still, that's life
isn't it.
As Johnny Carson once said: "If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and
all the impersonators would be dead."
The current (& planned)
status of my workshop is:
Machinery &
Tooling:
 | Lathe
- Advance 7" (3-1/2" centre ht) x 20", small second
hand Australian 'improved on' Myford M4
clone, similar to the Perfecto lathe (UK). See also my home
made/modified Lathe Radial Drilling & Light Milling
Attachment. |
| A second, more robust
lathe. A Ta Shing - 250mm swing x
600mm. |
| Milling
machine -
Second hand HM-30 mill drill (almost identical to ZX-30). Photo's
show new hand dials made from scrap pulleys. |
| Douglas Shaping
machine - Purchased second-hand - capable of machining up to a 10"
(250mm) cube (approx). Will put photo's on here soon - Currently needs a
machine vice (about 4" or 100mm size) & tooling. Hopefully
now I won't have to cut internal keyways by hand on the lathe (very slow,
tedious & (in my case,) painful). |
| 'Heko Junior Power Hacksaw' - An old & incomplete unit from the Eastern states.
Re-built & saving me a lot of (pain &) hard work. Made a lay-shaft to slow it down, now I can use it on high carbon steel
without overheating & stripping teeth off the blade. |
| Just
found a working, old industrial power hacksaw in a scrap yard
- more
robust than the Heko - Will service it & replace some bearings / bushes,
then it can be used - it's vice allows me to cut at more than just
90-deg. Will put photo's on here soon. |
| Bench grinders - one for
general tool grinding & one with a wheel for carbide tool
grinding (i.e. 'greenstone'). Lathe tip grinding
angle guide made from an old 'Stanley Bridges' circular saw table
accessory. |
| Dad's old 135A arc welder
bought in 1970. |
| Bar shear for
flat & round stock - found by a friend, rusting on a farm (shear was
rusting, not my friend - though you never know - he has got sandy-reddish
hair). |
| Hand & other tools -
mostly Chinese.
 | Common metalwork tools - twist drills, hacksaw, files, drifts etc.. |
| Taps & dies (many are cheap carbon steel ones, sold in car
shops for thread cleaning - Slowly adding a wider range.
Replacing carbon steel with HSS). I will add home-made taps for a couple of special threads - I plan
to use ACME in machinery making. I must make square broaches in a couple of sizes too. |
| Dial & vernier
callipers - They are the instruments I use most, highly recommended - reliable, accurate & no batteries or
electronics to fail. |
| Telescopic internal
gauges, small hole gauges, micrometers. |
| Dial (test) indicators
(plunger + finger type), magnetic stand. You can't have too many
of these. One dial indicator came
without lens or pointer, so I made new ones for it. I'd also like to add Dial Indicator Internal Hole Attachments,
both straight & right angled for awkward jobs - one day (he dreams -
with a sigh). |
| etc. |
|
Machinery Projects:.
Tooling Projects:
Notes & Interesting Ideas:
| The sort of things I keep an eye out for & try to salvage are shown on
my Shopping List web page. The list
includes most of the materials I feel 'You can't have too much of'. |
| Taper (Arbor) Specifications for Morse
taper & Jacobs taper - Imperial & Metric - Formulae for tailstock
offset. |
| Formulae for Milling on Shafts & Shanks
- Square on a shank, Flat on a shank, Flutes on a tap. |
| Masonry drills as boring bars . |
| Another good use for masonry drills - grind the end so it looks like
a normal twist drill - you can use it as a very hard twist
drill. It
can drill through case hardening & taps or H.S.S. drills when they break
off inside blind holes. |
| Aluminium cooking foil makes good thin shim - the brand I use measures
at 0.012mm or 0.0005" (0.5 thou). Aluminium drink cans are about
0.125mm or 0.005" (5 thou). Another source of thin aluminium as
shim is the foil barrier inside tins of coffee. |
| The 'sticky' oil used for chainsaw chains is the same as the correct lathe oil, but
available in small quantities. It works well on
my change gears, shaft bearings & leadscrew journals but is a bit too
viscous for my ways. |
| I found that good 2-stroke oil works very well on my lathe bed - It's a
fairly low viscosity oil that lubricates & protects well, but doesn't go sticky
or gummy if I
don't use the lathe for a week. |
| Engine bolts from big-ends, crankshaft bearings etc. are good quality high tensile
steel - good for making custom milling
cutters. To use:
anneal - make cutter - harden - re-temper. You'll often (in the
photo's) see me use re-ground twist drills as milling cutters, as on the Gear
Repairs page. They work quite well, and of course, nothings much
cheaper than a broken twist drill. |
| Carbide router bits (woodwork ones) are a good substitute for end
mills. The 1/2" shank ones are best as they're strongest.
Cheap Chinese ones work fine. Available in a wide range of
profiles. Remember: Keep the speed up & the feed rate down -
remember they're a 2-tooth cutter when calculating feed rates. |
| Tap & Reamer dimensions - diameter,
total length, cutter length, square end size. |
| Items like gudgeon pins, ball bearing shells etc, make good parallels
for setting up odd jobs when machining. |
| Wheel nuts (esp. the long ones with domed heads) plus bolts,
are good machinist's jacks for setting up items on the mill. |
| I do tempering of cutters etc. in cooking oil, in
an electric wok, 1hr per inch of thickness at about 180C to 190C. This
seems to work well. Tempering is done from 150C for very hard (&
brittle) tools, up to 310C for springs.
|
To email me
with comments, suggestions,
queries etc.
Click the icon Below
I'm regularly on MSN Messenger, as fozziesoft@hotmail.com
(It sometimes takes me a couple of days
before I can email back.
- If I take longer than a few days try again,
the hotmail filters are sometimes over-zealous
- Email subject lines containing the words,
re:, website or Fozziesoft sometimes seem to be treated as spam.
- I always reply to emails when I see them)
|
