Tailstock Die Holder! Let's Make One!

hug five seconds in and this video is already boring come on you gotta let me make that joke once hello internet my name is quinn and this is blondiax today i'm going to make a very often requested project and that's a tailstock die holder this is a great beginner lathe project this can be like the second or third thing that you ever make these are super useful in the hobby shop and we're gonna make one right now this is my very well used shop made tail stock die holder you've seen this a million times on my channel holds one inch dies and it's got a tommy bar that goes through the middle and then this shaft on the back is half an inch and it's designed to slide back and forth on there as you cut your thread i chose half inch for that shaft because that's the largest that will go in my tail stock chuck now this tommy bar has a whole bunch of different ways that you can use it for different thread cutting situations and i'll demonstrate those at the end of this video now i'm going to make a new tail stock die holder for these little 13 16 dies these are popular in model engineering for the really tiny weird threads and i had initially made this little ring here that sits in there to hold these small dies and it worked okay but it's kind of fussy and these little dies have the dimples 90 degrees apart instead of 180 so my set screws were not really lining up properly i was just using one and it worked okay but i don't know all of this is a good excuse to make a new tail stock die holder so that i can bring you along now there are as many designs for these things as there are home shop machinists a variation that i like is to make it a solid cylinder and have a recess at one end that takes one inch dies and a recess at the other that takes the smaller dies and then the center is choked down to half inch for the shaft something else you'll often see is knurling around the center to help hold it by hand these are all great ideas this is the design that i came up with and i just like the way it looks and it's worked really well for me so i'll make another one in the same style just for giggles i went ahead and modeled these in cad but you certainly don't need to for such a simple part but if you want these models and the drawings that i made from it you can hit up my patreon the junk pile was good to me today and supplied this nice chunk of 12l14 it's just barely long enough to do this but we'll squeeze one tail stock die holder out of this so chuck it up in the four jaw just because it happens to be on the lathe but you could do this on the three jaw and i'll dial that in i'll start by facing off the end as is tradition and then i will square the tool post and turn down the od i'll see if i can get away with turning this without tail support and the answer is no we definitely cannot that is wanting to chatter so in with the center drill and then in with the tail stock and now we can turn to our heart's content firmly supported now this is the kind of part that normally you would make on the lathe and then there's a couple of cross holes that we need to drill which you could do on the mill in about five minutes but just for giggles and as an exercise to challenge myself i'm going to make this project entirely on the lathe with only the drill press to go along with it i want to do this because i think tail stock die holder is a really great early lathe project if you're just getting into the hobby so you may not have a mill yet i just want to show you that you can definitely do this sort of thing on a drill press i would certainly recommend starting with a piece of stock that's closer to the final od that you want than this piece is i'm going to be making an awful lot of chips here you could save yourself a lot of work but this is what i had so i want to use it now you might be wondering why is it that model engineers and hobbyists all make tail stock die holders but you never see real machinists in real machine shops using these things there's a simple reason for that first of all home hobby threads are usually very small and so a die is a good use case there and also hobby lathes tend not to have threading gears in their transmissions so if you want a single point cut threads you have to spend 20 minutes swapping and cleaning greasy gears which is not a lot of fun so the tail stock die holder makes a ton of sense in the hobby shop even if you wouldn't bother with it in a real shop and now our finishing pass one of the reasons this is a great beginner project is that there are almost no dimensions on this thing that really matter as long as you get the diameter and the depth where the die sits correct everything else you can kind of wing it and if you miss a dimension here there it's no big deal so i am going to now drill through and this is the hole that's going to contain the shaft that guides the tail stock die holder so i'll start with a pilot drill all the way through then i'll go back in with one size under half inch which is what i'm going to ream too now in with the largest reamer that i have the beefy half inch reamer which for a hobby shop is pretty darn big and reaming this is certainly overkill you definitely don't need to do this again maximum precision definitely not necessary on this tool because it is just holding a die after all which is not a high precision cutter in any case if you're going to set out to make one of these it's important to understand what kinds of dies you want to use because these round dies come in a lot of different flavors first and foremost they might be split or unsplit so these are both split as you can see here there's a gap in them but a lot of round eyes are not split the split allows you to close them up tighter as they wear and then you need to look at the dimples that are there to retain the dye and whatever device is supposed to hold them so as you can see these little dyes have those dimples 90 degrees apart these larger dies have the dimples 180 degrees apart so make sure you account for that with the set screws and on some split dies you may also want a third set screw that has a point on it that goes into the split here because what that does is it holds the split open as you tighten the set screws on the sides these set screws as you tighten them in they're going to retain the die but they also will eventually collapse this gap right here so you can put a set screw in the end with a point on it to keep that from happening and then by extension that's also your adjustment you can back that screw out a little bit tighten these more if you want to close up the die alternatively some split dies like this one have their own little set screw in there which serves to retain the size of the gap so you don't have to worry about that with this style so it is possible to design one super voltron die stock that holds all these types in different ways as needed but that's not what i'm going to do here i'm just going to make a simple one for this style and in fact i'm not even going to bother with the bolt to control the split here because honestly just don't tighten them down that hard and it's fine if you're in the mood to be extra fussy the set screw theoretically goes on the center line of where the die sits but if you want to you can put the set screw just a hair behind center line because then it's going to encounter the taper in the back of the dimple here and that's going to tend to push the die back into the die stock and up against the reference surface it's going to tend to keep the die nice and square to the work but before you get too excited about that idea as you can see these dies tend to vary quite a bit the dimple on this one is not even centered i find them all different depths and they just really aren't very consistent you know maybe if you buy really high quality dies they are but these basic hobby grade dies they are not so if the set screws aren't perfectly seated in there maybe your die is going to be a couple thou crooked in there but honestly it's really not going to matter if you need more precision than that in your threads you're going to be single point cutting them anyway a die is never going to achieve a very high level of precision in any case now in with the boring bar and i'm going to bore out the recess where the die sits i'm going to touch off on the end and then i'm going to set up my indicator here and that will allow me to measure in precisely the thickness of the die so these dies that i'm working with are 250 thou so i'm going to move the carriage in 250 thou using that indicator and then i reset the indicator with a light preload the idea here is that i have a preload that's less than a full rotation so that i get some warning when i'm coming up to the zero but i don't have to remember which lap around the indicator i'm on and we proceed thusly until we're close to final dimension and i want you to understand that it's taking all of my willpower not to make seven or eight dad jokes about how boring this operation is we should be close now so i'm going to debur this and take a measurement and find out what our final pass needs to be so for that i'm going to bust out the telescoping bore gauge which you know if you want to annoy internet commenters call them a snap gauge because boy that drives people crazy and quick check with the micrometer and i've got about 10 thou to go on this dimension so i can go back in now the way that i finish a recess like this is the same way that i do a turning to a shoulder operation i do a finishing pass all the way into zero on my indicator which is setting my depth and then i lock the carriage and wind the cross slide in instead of out just like i would with a shoulder and then backing with a chamfering tool i'm going to break the inside edge lightly and on the outside i'm putting a more generous chamfer both because it looks nice and because it'll make the tool more pleasant to handle let's see how we did here a little test fit with the 13 16 die and that looks really nice it's a couple thou larger than the die so it slips in there nicely and then the depth looks to be right on the money we're flush with the outside edge there looking good all right now we're going to prepare to set up on the drill press now so i'm going to mark the end of the part here and then i'm what i'm going to be doing is flipping this guy around and turning a mandrel on the end of it to hold it in the drill press but to do that i need to part it off so here we go that seems to be the theme here lately i ran out of room on the parting blade so manuel yahtzee next up is the most difficult decision on any lathe project is the leftover stub worth saving might be good for something or is it too small to be useful does it go in the drawer does it go in the garbage bin as i said earlier i flipped it around dialed it back in and then turned down a mandrel on the end here small enough to go in a collet you'll see how this fits into the plan here in a minute because i'm going to do the cross holes on the drill press it's helpful to do some layout now so over to the surface plate get it all nice and clean and free of grit and i'm going to bust out the height gauge not something you see a lot on my channel but if you're not going to use the mill then this thing sure is a treat i'll just do a quick check that it's zeroed properly here now all we really need to do is mark the distance of the two cross holes from the end of the part so the first one is half the thickness of the die that's going to be the 440 set screws that hold the die in place so i'll mark that and then i'm just going to move up to the position where the tommy bar hole goes and i will mark that as well we don't actually need a coaxial line here because the part is still a perfect cylinder we need the holes to be on the same axis but it doesn't matter which axis however if it does matter here's how you can do that so i start by finding the height of the cylinder with the height gauge and then i move down to half of that distance and then when i'm getting close here i'll engage the fine feed there at the top of the height gauge i'll bring it down to half the diameter of my cylinder and then i can scribe this line and this is a really easy way to get a center line on a round part which can be tricky to do otherwise this is an area where the height gauge and the surface plate really shine however i'm actually not going to use that center line and i'll show you why here because we're going to use the collet block to do the 90 degree indexing so it doesn't matter where the first row of holes lands as long as the second hole is 90 degrees off but i wanted to show you that you can do this with layout if you're not going to use a collar block so over to the drill press table i'm going to make sure there aren't any burrs on there with my precision ground flat stones courtesy of lance balzy thank you lance next i'll bring in a recent donation to the channel a very nice screwless tool maker's vise it's got a v-groove in the jaw that's going to hold the cylinder nice and straight and then i'm going to use an adjustable parallel behind it and that's just going to serve as the indexing for the 90 degree spacing of the holes so get that guy seated down on the parallels and it's seated in the v-groove in the vise and that's going to also hold it above the vise so we don't drill into it and now to find the center line i'm going to use this old school trick i've got a flat parallel on there you could use a machinist rule whatever you have around and just wiggle it back and forth until it sits horizontal when pinned with the drill and that'll find the center line at the top too well within a couple of thousands if you're careful then i'm going to clamp the vise down and then i'm going to double check that it didn't move so we're still on center line and now what i can do is set up a fence effectively with a parallel clamp to the table okay but that's probably not square to the machine right it doesn't matter let me explain what i'm doing here because the drill press spindle is now centered on the crest of the cylinder there as long as we move the vise parallel to the axis of the cylinder it doesn't matter what the orientation of the cylinder is relative to the machine so we just need the vice to move parallel to its own axis because the vice is holding the cylinder parallel to itself so i can unclamp the vise and slide it and the spindle will always stay centered on the same axis that we started on as long as we slide it along our fence there now to locate the hole along the axis i can just line it up on our scribe line and just turn the chuck by hand a couple times and you can see that the dimple is centered on your line and if you do this carefully this will get you within a couple thousands and now i can center drill and drill all the way through for the tommy bar hole one of the things you really got to watch for in drill press work is that once you're set up you can't move anything vertically because of course it's a round column so if you have an older round column mill you may also have this problem so things like drills can really get you and that's why something like a set of screw machine length drills is a really good investment if you're going to be doing a lot of drill press work or if you once again have a round column mill on to the set screw holes now so i can loosen up the vise slide it along my fence down to the other layout line and once again using the little hand spin trick with the center drill to make sure that i'm perfectly centered on my line then once again center drill and drill the tapping size for 440 which is what i'm using for my set screws here i want to take advantage of this setup now for the tapping as well now you're not really supposed to put taps directly in jacob's chucks but people do it and you can get away with it to a certain extent taps are very very hard and that's not really what jacob's chucks are designed to grip however it helps to take the belts off of the spindle so that you're not resisting any motor forces there it gives you good feel on the tap so you don't break it and then i'm going to put the tap in here and just tap it by hand using the chuck now you can also just start the threads this way and then finish them over on the bench once they're started straight with the drill press then you can finish them but since i'm here i might as well do them all the way for the final trick with this setup it's time to index 90 degrees for the other set screw so i'm going to set up an end stop there so i can repeat that position i'll loosen the vise slightly rotate it and then use the adjustable parallel on the collet block to index on the other 90 degrees and make sure i'm up against my stop tighten the vise back down and we are right where we need to be to center drill drill and tap the other hole back to the bench now to debur things i'm using a combination of noga tools and needle files links to all these tools are in the description below the final step is to put the decorative taper on the back so i'm dialing it back into the forge off facing the other way and i'm setting the compound which is what i'm going to use to turn this taper it's a short enough taper that the compound will get it done here i'm setting it to 17 or 18 degrees it doesn't really matter a whole lot just something that's going to look nice and then i'll tighten that down and before i do the taper i'm going to part off the mandrel that we used on the drill press it's going to be kind of in the way here so this is a quick way to get rid of it and now i can start turning that taper so as i said i'm using the compound so i have the carriage locked and i'm using the cross slide to feed in and then i'm feeding across the work with the compound you can see that i put a piece of brass tubing on the compound hand wheel there makes it much quicker and more pleasant to crank long distances like this some people also use a hand drill with a t-shaped bar to power feed the compound but for this little job the brass tubing is getting it done last step i'm going to square up the tool post and get my chamfer tool in there and put a nice little chamfer on the inside the outside is kind of a funky angle so i'll chamfer that with a file and that is it for our little tail stock die holder now the shaft and the tommy bar are just simple pieces of round bar and in fact you don't even have to turn those on the lathe you can buy stock in those diameters so i'm not going to show that i am however going to show you the finishing that i'm going to do which is brownells oxford blue so i cleaned that with acetone and then this stuff just wipes right on now the key to getting good results with this stuff is absolute perfect cleanliness the part has to be completely and perfectly degreased if you do that just wipe the stuff on wipe off the excess oil it and bob's your uncle you've got a very nice blackened part and test fit with a die here and that goes in there really nicely and that is our finished tail stock die holder now let's give this thing a test drive so the shaft goes in the chuck in the tail stock we slide that in close to the work tommy bar goes in the hole and i'll show you a couple of different ways to use it so you can hold the tommy bar and turn the chuck or if you need help starting a thread which often is the case you can rest the tommy bar on block wood there and you can apply pressure with the tail stock on the back of the tommy bar while you turn the chuck so you don't need three hands for this and then once you've got it going you can also just hold the chuck and turn the tommy bar as such the tommy bar can be slid back and forth for more leverage and you can slide it out of the way once you need to crank that die back off of there and there is our beautiful lovely thread that's a quarter 40 thread which is very common model engineering thread so it's a very very fine pitch perfect for cutting with a die so that's the final result i hope you enjoyed watching me make this i hope you'll make one of these too go and check out my patreon for 3d models and drawings if you'd like to make one of these yourself thanks for watching and i'll see you next time you

Channel: Blondihacks

Views: 84,713

Rating: 4.9538832 out of 5

Keywords: blondihacks, machining, machinist, abom79, this old tony, vintage machinery, steam, electronics, making, maker, hacking, hacker, lathe, mill, woodworking, workshop, shop, model engineering, engineer, engineering, live steam, machine shop, metal lathe, vertical mill, metalworking, metal shop, jewlery making, diy, home improvement, resin casting, how to, do it yourself, do it yourself (hobby), ASMR, mini mill, mini lathe, tutorial, tailstock die holder, tailstock, die holder, die stock, threading

Id: U9v4FHaAOdg

Length: 19min 6sec (1146 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2020