Possible Lathe Project

First item: prayer request. Reader Ruth says Sarah M., the daughter of a friend, has breast cancer. She is not doing well. Her tests keep turning up bad results. The cancer has metastasized to her brain. She is in early middle age, and she has kids. They do not know the cancer has reached her brain. Her mother is a Christian, but Sarah is not. Her mother wants people to pray for healing and for her salvation.

Ruth has had cataract surgery, and she would appreciate prayer for a good outcome.

Mish now has a white blood cell count of 200 per ml. If it hits 500 for three consecutive days, it means the transplant was a success.

Back to obsessing on my all-important hobbies.

Last time I tried to find someone to move a machine in the Miami area, I got nowhere. I don’t know why. Ordinarily, I am the champion boolean Googler of the whole universe.

I have been trying to find someone to move a machine here from a freight terminal, so I could use a dealer who was helpful to me. The local dealer doesn’t need help to get the machine here. Yesterday, I decided to try Google again, and I found a bunch of movers right off the bat.

Weird thing: one of them is someone I already know. My dad has a client whose employees are Teamsters. I helped my dad when he negotiated a contract with them. The name of the client’s business popped up on Google.

The crazy thing about this is that I didn’t know what the business actually did. I knew they had big trucks. That was about it. I didn’t really have to know. But their entire business is moving heavy machinery. So I asked my old man to see what they could do for me.

I may go with the local dealer anyway. The other guy has sort of drifted off. I asked him to give me some quotes, and I don’t have them yet. Maybe I was more concerned about giving him my business than I should have been, but I don’t like letting a salesperson help me and then buying somewhere else.

In any case, funny coincidence. And it shows how little a lawyer may know about his client. That’s a good thing, I guess. You don’t want to pay a lawyer to find out things he doesn’t need to know.

I’m wondering if I should start looking for a follow rest or steady rest. Yesterday I chucked a piece of half-inch dowel in the lathe and screwed around with it. When I applied pressure with the cutting tool, I got some deflection. The metal bounced back and produced a serviceable cut (which might not impress, if the dial indicator were applied), but it seems like a stupid way to machine.

I guess the dowel was about 8″ long, and I had maybe 6″ sticking out of the chuck.

That was stupid, now that I think about it. I could have chucked the entire 30″ piece, with 2″ sticking out of the chuck. The spindle is hollow. I guess I don’t need a rest unless I have to machine most of the length of a thin or long workpiece, or I’m forced to work a long way from the chuck. I suppose I also have to figure out when turning between centers is the best idea.

Jim Dunmyer linked to something about the correct way to use a 4-jaw chuck (thanks, Jim). I better go copy it and put it in a Word document and put it in my notebook.

The Grizzly I stupidly chose not to buy has four brass screws in the left end of the spindle, facing inward. They’re there to steady the free ends of long items. That seems like a neat idea. Last night I was thinking a good project would be to make something like that. My lathe has an aluminum wheel at the left side of the spindle, held on with set screws. I could make a new version of that, with a collar sort of thing added, through which I could run four brass screws. I don’t know if I’ll ever need it, but it would be a good training exercise. Boring the holes would be tough without a drill press or mill, but there may be a way to do it.

I wonder how hard it is to make a steady rest, once you have milling capacity. Seems like it shouldn’t require much precision, since the bars or screws that support the work would be adjustable.

Or I could wait forty years for a used one to become available.