Show Us Your Shop Made Tooling!

Well I got my tangential tool holder built. I took Jim2's design and scaled it down for my AXA tool post and 1/4" tool bits. Haven't had a lot of opportunity to use it yet as it's currently 30 deg. in the hangar. I want to get a cobalt bit for it. It does a great job facing. I also rotated the bit 90 deg. to use as a shear bit and got a pretty nice finish on hot rolled steel. I see this as being my work horse turning tool.
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Jim2 details how to do it. You drill a hole for the back corner, then cut with a slitting saw & 1/8" end mill in one set up. Quite ingenious, I wish I could take credit but I can't.
 
Just damn, you guys do good work!

I'd be proud to have any of the tools in my cabinet

Mike
 
20170315_195120.jpg So, at work, I have a job that requires cutting 0.030 radius grooves in some parts on the lathe. I don't know about y'all, but my fingers are too big to try to hold a piece of 1/8 inch hss anywhere near straight enough in a tool holder to get the set screws to clamp it down on a piece of 3/4 hss. I've done it with 1/4 but it seems to take forever to grind it to the required thickness without overheating it.
So, I decided to make a tool holder to accept 1/8 hss blanks. Grinding to thickness and the radius was much quicker than using bigger hss and it doesn't waste a bunch of tooling potential along the way. So here is my solution to MY problem. I'm sure it's not much to many of you, but any tool I make that works is a big deal to me.
 
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So, I decided to make a tool holder to accept 1/8 hss blanks. Grinding to thickness and the radius was much quicker than using bigger hss and it doesn't waste a bunch of tooling potential along the way. So here is my solution to MY problem. I'm sure it's not much to many of you, but any tool I make that works is a big deal to me.

I like that!

OK, so basic construction is a slot for the 1/8 toolbit, then cut away at the fron to less than .125 thickness for support? Simple, elegant and blessedly rigid. That'd make a nice cutoff tool for less-rigid lathes, methinks.
 
Made a magnetic indicator holder for my Atlas lathe.
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I like that!

OK, so basic construction is a slot for the 1/8 toolbit, then cut away at the fron to less than .125 thickness for support? Simple, elegant and blessedly rigid. That'd make a nice cutoff tool for less-rigid lathes, methinks.

Yeah, it's a pretty simple design. No major mind boggling thought went into it. For smaller stuff, it would be fine as a cutoff tool. You could probably get away with parting 1 1/4" diameter stuff, maybe slightly bigger. But if course you could make one to do larger if you wanted.
 
Well I got my tangential tool holder built. I took Jim2's design and scaled it down for my AXA tool post and 1/4" tool bits. Haven't had a lot of opportunity to use it yet as it's currently 30 deg. in the hangar. I want to get a cobalt bit for it. It does a great job facing. I also rotated the bit 90 deg. to use as a shear bit and got a pretty nice finish on hot rolled steel. I see this as being my work horse turning tool.
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I really like that tangential tool holder! That's on my short list for sure!
 
There's an ongoing interest in tool rests for bench grinders. I've played round with this one for a while, and people might find some of the details useful.
I use this to grind the blades of woodworking planes and HSS steel engine lathe tools except for acme thread tools.
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The base cradle is a short piece of 5" channel iron with a large portion milled out of one end leaving just 2 prongs to support the pivots which are 1/2" shoulder bolts through reamed holes in the base into counter bored holes in the steel table.
The angle of the table is set by a simple, eccentric half turn cam. Turning the cam 180 degrees pivots the table through an arc of 30 degrees. The adjustment lever passes through an oversized hole in a shaft collar, so tightening the knurled knob locks the camshaft in place to hold the angle. By moving the base in or out and sometimes adding a shim to raise it, I can grind a tool angle from 0 degrees to 30 degrees.
The single carriage bolt and thumbscrew that holds the tool rest to the bench lets me pivot the rest slightly when I don't want to use the full width of the grinding wheel. I like to do this for the last passes close to the edge when I'm sharpening older plane blades of thick, very hard carbon steel to avoid burning the edge.
The miter gauge pivots 45 degrees left and right.
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There's an aluminum barrier and drip edge on the bottom of the aluminum slide set close to the steel table to keep coolant and grit from getting between them. Most of it collects in the cut out quart oil bottle.
I had the brass cabinet pull lying around, so I screwed it on. It's very comfortable and secure in my hand.
 
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