I spent another long day on the hobber spindle. I ended up getting a bunch of chatter with my roughing tool, but it cleaned up nicely with my pointed tool. This was a LONG day of material removal, mixed with lots of grinding HSS as I kept deciding that the S&F app I have was too conservative, and had reality correct me
When we left me last time, I had just the left most diameter. This was me in the process of roughing out as much as I could for the 2nd diameter, bearing surface, N05 bearing but, and center section. Not many are visible here yet, but they are coming.
After roughing, I got the bearing area done as a light press fit, plus single pointed the strange 0.969-32 thread.
However, I messed up on the threads in a way I hope won't burn me. I cut by depth to the top of the tolerance. As I pulled out my tool to do thread wires, I crashed my cutter and snapped it off.
I found that the nut is quite tight (requires a wrench to tighten), but I decided to take the risk and run with it, rather than the risk of trying to pick the thread back up, particularly with a 32 tpi thread. Hopefully I'll survive
At this point, I am doing final turning for where the gears come out of the back of the spindle. But, you can see the 2nd bearing seat next to the blued area for my N03 .664-32 thread. By this point my "roughing tool", which gives my best finish, is no longer chattering, so I get the 5/8" diameter done with it.
And here I'm drilling for the drawbar. I drilled 13/32 as deep as possible on this side. You can also see my N03 thread is done, which turned out just about perfect for the nut! Seeing as this is the more important one for being able to take this apart, I consider this a win
Next, I flipped the shaft around in the 4 jaw (after parting off!), And faced the flange.
Next, I finish drilling through for the drawbar, then a clearance to start the MT2. I started with the roughing reamer, but it is slow going and tedious, so the dinner bell called me in
a few more tasks to finish this, but it feels like the end is in sight!