The adventures of a Jeep and its driver.
Managed to get the saddle off the knee of the Kearney & Trecker 2HL. This is the last major component to come off the mill. I was advised NOT to take the knee off, plus to do so would probably be impossible in my current shop. Video link in my bio.
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I spent a bunch of time machining this cast iron straight edge from Denis Foster for an upcoming class on machine scraping. First time ever machining something like this, especially the odd shapes. I got a lot of help from the maker, and others, and it came out great! There’s a link in my bio to the first of the two part video series I have up on YouTube.
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Single point threading a 5/18-11 bolt for the steady rest. No thread relief. Tried the old “disengage the half nuts and retract the cross slide at the same time” dance for the first time. Nerve wracking.
This won’t win me any awards, but the bed clamp for the South Bend steady rest is done! This journey of learning to be a hobby machinist is so much fun. I’ve watched enough videos of the real deal that I figured I could put some of what I gleaned to use and this is one of those results. If all goes well, I’ll have the video for this posted at my normal time tomorrow at 11:00am Eastern time. I have another on the K&T all ready to go just in case I can’t get it done. It’s amazing how long it can take to whittle 6 hours of footage (12 hours if you count the second camera) into a 20-25 minute video! Fingers crossed! 🤞🏻
I removed the drive train from my K&T 2HL horizontal mill. My only purpose was to clean the insides of the column real good of all the gunk that’s collected in there over the last 80 years. That, and to inspect the gears for excessive wear or broken teeth.
A little for your Friday. I bought these two height gauges along with two others at auction. They were pretty filthy. Nothing a little elbow grease can’t solve. Still need to get the crystal for the one. But they are both accurate and working. Money well spent. Now, I just need to decide if I want to part with any of them!
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The generosity of strangers never ceases to amaze me. I reached out on a local community Fakebook group to see if my town had any other hobby machinists. Hoping to make a friend or two. Not only did I make a new friend, but since he recently retired, he gifted me some of the tools he still had but no longer needed. Wow. Just wow. Made my day. I am honored to be the new custodian of these tools.
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A couple local scores from FB and CL. So now that I have two Kennedy tool boxes, I almost feel like I might become a mediocre amateur machinist. 😉
I did find out the Craftsman chest was made by Waterloo. It’s missing the front cover, unfortunately.
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