Making a series of 1-3/8” holes....

Firstgear said:
Yes a pattern of 5-6-5 or 4-5-4. About 12-13” long and either 6 or 8” wide if I use plate or 4” wide if I use the box section. I have materials in all cases....I have a rotary table on order, but hasn’t arrived yet.

I ordered up an annular cutter.....
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Would love to hear how you fare with the annular cutter. Please keep us posted.

Regards,
Terry
 
Will do.....we are in Maine right now but will be home in 9 days....then I can get back to it before we have to head to northern Virginia to see my 95 year old dad....hopefully I get it sorted because when we come back from there we leave again in a few days for Japan and a cruise to Russia and the Bearing Sea ending up in Vancouver....2 week cruise. Travel is my wife’s thing and I don’t buck it because she has been extremely supportive of my stuff....cars, photography and now the machine shop stuff. She has never given me a hard time about what I spend (we each have our own money) or what it gets spent on....obviously within reason, meaning spend what you can afford and not go into hock to get the stuff, whatever it is!
 
Firstgear said:
Will do.....we are in Maine right now but will be home in 9 days....then I can get back to it before we have to head to northern Virginia to see my 95 year old dad....hopefully I get it sorted because when we come back from there we leave again in a few days for Japan and a cruise to Russia and the Bearing Sea ending up in Vancouver....2 week cruise. Travel is my wife’s thing and I don’t buck it because she has been extremely supportive of my stuff....cars, photography and now the machine shop stuff. She has never given me a hard time about what I spend (we each have our own money) or what it gets spent on....obviously within reason, meaning spend what you can afford and not go into hock to get the stuff, whatever it is!
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Sounds like you've got a great marriage! Congratulations. My bride and I are going on 48 years, and we, too, are pretty compatible. Mercifully, we BOTH pretty much hate to travel. She loves to garden - she's very close to getting a 'Master Gardener' designation. I like livestock and working on stuff - tractors, old cars and trucks, other equipment. (That's actually how I got into machining. Occasionally, needing some parts that I couldn't buy, making them instead.)

What's your avatar? Mine's a '54 Chevy truck street rod that I built.

Regards,
Terry
 
tjb said:
Sounds like you've got a great marriage! Congratulations. My bride and I are going on 48 years, and we, too, are pretty compatible. Mercifully, we BOTH pretty much hate to travel. She loves to garden - she's very close to getting a 'Master Gardener' designation. I like livestock and working on stuff - tractors, old cars and trucks, other equipment. (That's actually how I got into machining. Occasionally, needing some parts that I couldn't buy, making them instead.)

What's your avatar? Mine's a '54 Chevy truck street rod that I built.

Regards,
Terry
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That is my 2015 Corvette Z06. My wife and I towed my Z06 from Ohio out to Las Vegas area for running in the Silver State Classic closed road race. Objective is to hit what ever Speed class you are in, that average speed over 90 miles of closed highway. This was the second time we have run that race. We were in the 105mph class and this year we won our class! Our target time was 51 minutes - 25.71 seconds. We were off that target by 0.0373 seconds. My wife had a stop watch and we speed corrected every mile for 90 miles. The previous race we ran we were off by 0.954 seconds and that was good for 5th in our class. Speed classes range from 95 to 180mph and an unlimited class. The record speed averaged 216 mph over the 90 miles and a top speed of 242mph. Cars that run that are repurposed NASCAR race cars.

Full safety gear is required with the regulations getting tighter the faster you go. Even in our class helmets (motorcycle helmets don’t meet the safety requirements), race gloves and shoes are minimum. On the back of your helmet you had to have your name and blood type! They inspect all 4 tires up close before you go out to run.

I also have a ‘60 Corvette restrooms I built and currently in process building a ‘63 Corvette Splut Window restomod. My wife has a ‘37 Ford with 396 supercharged motor along with an 8 point rollbar. We also have a 1930 Ford Model A streetrod.

So between cars, photography ( www.herbturner.smugmug.com ) and now machining that about does it.

Regards, Herb
 
Herb, I've drilled big holes in aluminum and steel many times over the years, from thin sheet to thick pieces, and I've used hole saws, trepanning tools, Silver and Deming bits, Uni-bits and sometimes resorted to boring them. Of all the ways I've tried, annular cutters are, by far, the best way to drill a clean large hole (unless it has to be precisely sized, in which case you have to bore it).

Unlike a big S&D bit, annular cutters don't jam or rip the work piece out of the vise. They stay sharp for a long time, cut clean holes that clean up with a simple deburring tool and are very fast to use in thin materials. If you use stick wax and proper technique the cutter stays cool and remains sharp far longer than a drill. I'm so convinced of the superiority of annular cutters that I gave away my S&D set.

Finally, I wanted to warn you that drilling big holes can be dangerous. When a drill bit breaks through it can catch that work piece and rip it out of a vise so be really careful if you use a drill. Uni-bits are pretty safe. Annular cutters have never jammed on me but I suspect even they have the potential.

A final warning. If you use a big S&D bit, use a keyed chuck to hold it. If you're using a keyless chuck and the drill jams, the self-tightening design of the chuck can over-tighten and you'll have a hell of a time getting the tool out of the chuck.
 
mikey said:
Herb, I've drilled big holes in aluminum and steel many times over the years, from thin sheet to thick pieces, and I've used hole saws, trepanning tools, Silver and Deming bits, Uni-bits and sometimes resorted to boring them. Of all the ways I've tried, annular cutters are, by far, the best way to drill a clean large hole (unless it has to be precisely sized, in which case you have to bore it).

Unlike a big S&D bit, annular cutters don't jam or rip the work piece out of the vise. They stay sharp for a long time, cut clean holes that clean up with a simple deburring tool and are very fast to use in thin materials. If you use stick wax and proper technique the cutter stays cool and remains sharp far longer than a drill. I'm so convinced of the superiority of annular cutters that I gave away my S&D set.

Finally, I wanted to warn you that drilling big holes can be dangerous. When a drill bit breaks through it can catch that work piece and rip it out of a vise so be really careful if you use a drill. Uni-bits are pretty safe. Annular cutters have never jammed on me but I suspect even they have the potential.

A final warning. If you use a big S&D bit, use a keyed chuck to hold it. If you're using a keyless chuck and the drill jams, the self-tightening design of the chuck can over-tighten and you'll have a hell of a time getting the tool out of the chuck.
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Thanks Mikey...all great words to remember...is the stick wax only applied at the start of each hole to the cutter itself every time? If I had cutting oil applied in a continuous manner would that be ok or if I sprayed WD40?
 
I thought about boring but couldn’t think of a way to do it on the mill.....how could I do it? I have a rotary table under my mill vice and thought about turning the rotary table to create a sweeping motion under the mill spindle but given my rookie classification I thought it would be much easier to just use the mill table in the x-y-z space as opposed to trying to rotate the work piece for every hole and hope that I somehow got them all where I wanted and didn’t screw up a hole where I felt I wanted to start over....
 
Stick wax is good stuff. You can use it to lube a grinding belt, band saw blade, drills, taps or in this case, an annular cutter. You just wipe some on and go. You can use cutting oil, too. WD-40 works for aluminum but not for other materials.

As for boring holes, you use a boring head. It is cumbersome to use and wouldn't make sense in your case. A rotary table likewise wouldn't make sense because the work piece is big and you would have to figure a way to clamp it. An annular cutter is the way to go. Expensive, but it will outperform a drill any day.
 
mikey said:
A final warning. If you use a big S&D bit, use a keyed chuck to hold it. If you're using a keyless chuck and the drill jams, the self-tightening design of the chuck can over-tighten and you'll have a hell of a time getting the tool out of the chuck.
Click to expand...

Now, this is good advice. I thought that I was going to destroy a chuck once trying to get a bit out. No joke!
 
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