Junk build: Lathe Steady Rest

i found this in the river my best guess is it's a shaft collar from a line shaft but half of it fell off when i started cleaning it up i think it'll make a good centerpiece for this project one of these bolts i did actually manage to get loosened up and so i can take that one out but this one is well there's really nothing to grab on to there the first thing i'm going to do is knock that out so i can see now that this side is threaded in hmm i've got both of these surfaces on both pieces cleaned up and now i want to deck off the mating surfaces and this is just one of those setups where it's just the easiest thing to do is set it up on some one two three blocks and some strap clamps sometimes i struggle with how much to take off and how much to clean it up because i want an aesthetic that makes it look like it was made out of scrap metal but also looks like whoever made it cared about making it i think that's about right i feel like i'm getting my money's worth out of these 123 blocks today did you catch the mistake i made earlier when i had these clamped on the one two three blocks i didn't have any support under the middle so i was effectively warping it which means that the two surfaces are not parallel pop this thing on the surface plate and it'll rock back and forth a little bit but at this point i've got two surfaces that i can hold in the vise so i'll just surface it off again here real quick grinding these things is entirely superfluous other than making them look nicer but i just got the grinder and i want to play with it i've got this to a point where i can kind of go back now and figure out what the rest of this looks like in a manner that makes sense so i think i'm going to use this piece for the part that rides on the ways this will be the riser that sits on top of it and then this will mate onto there and then this one will be the clamp underneath i'm taking some measurements off of the tail stock from the lathe to get the geometry figured out for the v-groove and for the clamp the rails on the bed are three inches apart so i did a couple layout lines three inches apart i know i want this v-groove to end on that line this side is cleaner so this will be the side that's flat and i'm going to cut the v-groove in this side went in just kissed it right there i'm on my scribe line vertically to figure out how far i need to go in i just laid this out in cad instead of doing the math i need to go in 447 [Applause] so this is coming in about 5 000 steeper than it should i'm going to grind this anyway so that's okay but it's a little bit more grinding that i'd like to do on the way by to the grinder and do a little quick test fit it's close fits in between the carriage nicely so now that i've got this ground and fitting pretty well on here figuring out what the center height is this only needs to be approximate but taking a picture with my phone and zooming in i can read it pretty well actually this is a pretty terrible setup in terms of rigidity but it makes working out the fit and the geometry a lot easier this is all based off of where the bottom of the original hole cleans up so so [Music] i'm on center on this part and i've got a half inch pin in the chuck so i just want to find where this hole lives looks like it's right there [Music] [Music] so so since there's already a hole in here that's off center i'm just going to go through it with a half inch end mill so at this point i'm using this to just get this as close to centered as i can because it's so rough it's hard to know exactly where but i think that's pretty good i've got this thing lined up the way i want it i would have liked to have gotten two pins in here but given the limitations of the space i don't really know where i'm gonna put the other one i'm not gonna drive that all the way home right now because i'm probably gonna take this apart again so i was thinking this was cast iron by the shape of it but this stuff is really hard i dulled two end mills before i switched to a carbide one i can barely cut it with the carbide it's 45 50. i don't know what the heck this stuff is 65 doesn't even touch it but this is the shape i want it's a really good shape for the piece i want good size so i think what i'm going to do is throw this in my heat treat oven and try to anneal it that's good and hot so i'm just going to turn this off let it cool down in the oven come back tomorrow and see how it is this might not be fully annealed but i think it's at least to the point where it's under 40 should be machinable now [Music] [Music] a little bit of grinding it's a nice snug fit in there and it'll drop in from the top so i can set it up anywhere i need it it's pretty good i just want to clean up the backsides on these heads a little bit they're a little rough did you really want to watch me center drill drill and tap another hole this is actually really interesting this side has grain in it so it looks like it's wrought iron but this is the side that was super hard but now that i have it cleaned up i can see there's actually a fusion line in there where this piece is actually i guess forge welded into another piece and when i had cut this initially i had tested the edge for hardness and it was seemed like it would be machinable but this piece was super hard really interesting i guess this was probably a die of some sort this all took quite a bit of fiddling to get set up but i've got this clamped on now so that it will slide got a block of wood between that and the carriage the carriage can push it in the boring head in the lathe and this should give me a nice clean trued up bore right through the middle of it right on the center see how this goes a little bit of wiggle there so just readjusting a little bit it's about to hit this screw in the bottom here so we'll get that out of the way it doesn't really need to be in there since these are holding it down sometimes i'll do something and it will surprise me when it goes exactly the way i think it will i don't know what that says about me it's not totally cleaned up but it's enough that i can come in and indicate off of these two surfaces to get centered up and to locate where the fingers are going to go but before i do that i need to figure out the figures my thought here is to make the fingers out of some 954 bronze and just thread them through it but i'm really not sure how well that thread is actually going to keep it straight so what i did was i drilled and tapped a 7 16 14 hole in this piece of scrap just so as a test gauge and i also found some of these old nuts that i salvaged i'm going to use these as lock nuts but these are 3 8 so i need to drill and tap those and the backs on these are really rough so i need to i need to do that to them the great thing about single point threading is you can adjust the fit to exactly what you want that's still a little bit tight so i'm going to keep creeping up on it probably blow past what i need so checking this thing in a couple different positions with a square and some feeler gauges it's definitely not perfectly square i think that's an issue of how square the bottom of the nut is and how square it's tapped through the piece but it's close enough for what i want to do let me go ahead and finish this up i don't know why i'm on a kick about doing square heads on these things but i think they came out pretty nice i think it gives it that old-timey feel the bad news is i have two of these and right off the bat i turned that down too small which means i need to make one of these out of this and i haven't figured out my metal stretching gags yet so i need to wait for another piece but with two of them i can go ahead and get the mounts made so that's pretty well squared up there so there's the easy one let's figure out the other ones i know i want them to be [Music] 120 degrees apart so 90 and another 30 gets me a line here and line there i know front to back i'm centered on it so i'm going to leave this vice set up and not move the table so that gives me that line straight up and down dodgy setup but should be good for drilling in order to do the math on this i need to know what this bore is there's a spot there either side that's pretty well cleaned up this is where the micrometer stand comes in handy i am getting three one 14 which might not sound like much for steady rest but the stock logan one is actually only three inch capacity so i'm right about there do a couple more of these so a quick little cad drawing says 778 got that figured out got it right there have all sorts of fun clearance issues to try to work around would this have been better to set up and drill from the bottom it would but i don't know how i would reference off of these i would end up having to create another reference surface to try to do that i think dealing with all these clearance issues is the better way to do it especially because i'm this far into it the little stubby drill bit was the result of trying to helicoil an exhaust manifold bolt in my van a number of years ago needed the extra clearance i cut it off but i thought it would work for this but in the end i just need a longer drill bit so i got one can't get it in there i'm actually only going to tap this part it's an oversized reamer i don't know how much that's going to help keep things lined up but it'll at least help keep things from binding up on the outside here [Music] that should wrap up the machining for this part i do want to try to clean up some more of this rust though get a little bit nicer looking some of the scale down in some of the pits on this was really hard to get out i got most of it out and i'm going to hit this with some cold blue i think a good test of this thing is going to be to see if i can face off and center drill this piece of inch and a half stock that's pretty much maxing out my lathe here i did get the third finger made obviously and i went back and remade the second finger as well so that it's actually long enough because that happened right now this is just running on the mill finish on the stock so i'm going to clean up a little bit and then swap the carriage and steady rest to face off and center drill the end i planned this out poorly i should have just set it up like this the first time i've got a lot of stick out but this is another new tool to learn i didn't get the torch cut totally cleaned up on this but for the purpose of testing this out in this demonstration i think it's good enough so there it is whether you love it or hate it you got to admit it has a lot more character than most steady rests and it works i made a bunch of mistakes in this i showed some of them one that i didn't show is this finger on the back side the hole when i was drilling it something shifted it's not in at exactly the right angle but i think that will only be an issue if i'm doing something that's a really really small diameter like 5 16. i think we all make mistakes and the moral of the story is it doesn't have to be perfect it's just more important to try and do it make something that works make something you're proud of and until next time grab your junk go make something

Channel: Jeremy Makes Things

Views: 1,338

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: DIY, Metal lathe, Scrap art, Shop made tools, Steady Rest, lathe, logan, machining, machinist, metal working, scrap metal, upcycle

Id: bHTCAfw7ZnI

Length: 28min 7sec (1687 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021