2015 POTD Thread Archive

savarin said:
No one is more suprised than myself, I expected heaps of squeals and judder instead it went through like a hot knife through butter leaving a very smooth finish.
Mind you I dont think it would have had a chance in steel.:grin:
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I too have made a stepped cutter out of unknown steel , it took ages to get the diameter right as it was so dammed hard a steel .
(That'll teach me to buy 50 kg of off cuts of unknown quality off eBay :angry no:.

I also cut the cutter teeth with an angle grinder too , using a thin stainless steel tube cutting blade to get the cutting angles nice and clean .
and threaded the opposite end for a 19 mm headed bolt so I can use a ratchet & socket to clean out both ends of 30 or more aluminum tubes that make up the fruit cage that now sits over our small garden pond to keep the leaves out .
 
savarin said:
I needed something to bore two different diameters for a flanged bearing.
Having played with the drive shaft chunk I thought of a use for it.
I turned down the first bit 12mm to fit the existing hole then to fit the bearing dia.
Then an angle grinder to roughly add some teeth.
One end for the bearing the other end for the flange diameters.
Pretty scrappy but it worked remarkably well and produced a clean hole.
View attachment 111200
Not having a mill I held the tool in the chuck, pressed the face of my tail stock drill chuck against the aluminium side plate to keep it square and allowed the side arm to spin until it hit the cross slide and spin no more
View attachment 111199

Heres the fit, the screws dont quite touch the flange.
View attachment 111201
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Way to use tools available and make your own to solve a job.
 
Nicely done. " Necessity is the mother of, my next door neighbors, cousins, uncle " or something like that. Mike
 
This morning I was working on a boring bar to hold some carbide inserts that I got cheap. But that's not the subject of this post.

I made some good progress this morning then I had lunch. One of the beauties of being retired - after lunch I decided to laze on the sofa for a bit and watch youtube videos. I came across this guy comparing $10 Chinese calipers to his Mitutoyo calipers. I almost didn't watch it because I rarely use calipers and I figured he'd say all the obvious things, which he did. But then he went to work on his Chinese calipers.


I generally use calipers almost like using a pocket rule, that is just a quick measurement. When I want to be more precise I'll use micrometers, surface gage, etc. I have several cheap Chinese calipers because at one point I was considering using them for a cheap DRO but then figured they weren't worth the hassle.

Now the odd thing is that I have bought other items from Harbor Freight. Invariably the first thing I do with such a purchase is to clean it up, tighten it, remove rough edges, etc. Until I saw the above video it didn't even occur to me to do the same with these calipers.

Anyway, I then went down and deburred them with emery cloth and steel wool. Straightened them, lightly oiled certain parts using a pipe cleaner, and adjusted the little screws so that they were more snug. Then I opened and closed them each 100 times (I counted).

I tested each one on a couple of different gage blocks, taking three measurements each. They now return a much more accurate reading then they did before.

If you have similar calipers I'd recommend doing the same, especially if you're using them as one of your main measuring tools.
 
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Charles Spencer said:
I generally use calipers almost like using a pocket rule, that is just a quick measurement. When I want to be more precise I'll use micrometers, surface gage, etc. I have several cheap Chinese calipers because at one point I was considering using them for a cheap DRO but then figured they weren't worth the hassle.

Now the odd thing is that I have bought other items from Harbor Freight. Invariably the first thing I do with such a purchase is to clean it up, tighten it, remove rough edges, etc. Until I saw the above video it didn't even occur to me to do the same with these calipers.

Anyway, I then went down and deburred them with emery cloth and steel wool. Straightened them, lightly oiled certain parts using a pipe cleaner, and adjusted the little screws so that they were more snug. Then I opened and closed them each 100 times (I counted).

I tested each one on a couple of different gage blocks, taking three measurements each. They now return a much more accurate reading then they did before.

If you have similar calipers I'd recommend doing the same, especially if you're using them as one of your main measuring tools.
Click to expand...

I was taught if you only need a measurement accurate to .001 then a caliper would do if you needed closer than that then measure with a micrometer.
 
firestopper said:
Had to fix a rear axel seal leak on my daily driver (82 Fj40). The recently compleated work bench made it a pleasure to efficiently complete the required work.Turned out a seal installation tool for both the rear and front inner axel seal. View attachment 111031View attachment 111032
Click to expand...

Paco, sweet FJ40 and extremely nice shop. I had a similar looking FJ40 in my shop about a month ago doing some much needed repairs for a client. He had a SBC in it though and it was not what I would exactly call a "clean" installation. Absolutely no where near the condition of yours. Very nice for a daily driver.

My Jeep is far from old, actually the newest vehicle I have ever owned, but I plan on keeping it for many, many years and one day hope it will be a good representation of a well kept daily driver/ weekend wheeler/RV toad.

Mike.
 
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