Resusitating Some Chinese Iron

I am back to the project now that the Christmas decorations are back in storage. I have a 9X12, B-grade granite plate. I would gotten a bigger one with a ledge if I had known I was going to go this route. I ordered an Anderson Tubular, 18" scraper with a HSS blade, tubes of Canode red and blue spotting ink, a 2" brayer, and a better indicator holder. I am bidding on a Tesa Tast indicator with a resolution of 0.00005" and a +/-.004 range to compliment my 5 tents resolution indicator. I probably won't win it, but I'll keep looking a a 1 tenth indicator. I know that I will be converting to carbide eventually, so I'm also looking for a used motor to spin a diamond wheel. I should have enough toys to start butchering and angle plate later next week.

I decided to take some rough measurements of the X slide bearing surface, just to see how nasty my machining was. The X dovetails and bearing surface were machined with the table top as the reference surface. I used both my 5 tenth test indicator and my depth micrometer to measure the left, center, right height of both bearing surfaces. Both instruments agreed, which was satisfying in itself. The measurements are in the photo attached. The bearing surfaces are slightly concave, which I suspect are easier for a novice to deal with.
IMG_1185.JPG
.2155, .2150, .2165 top
.2160, .2145, .2165 bottom
 
You are going to need a longer surface plate for scraping the slide to, unless you you have a camel back type of straight edge to use. Those numbers are not too bad, I usually find the numbers to vary as much as .030" and more on slides I've worked on in my past. If I got a worn out slide back to within .0015-.002" at any place measured, I called it good as long as the way members were flat to a surface plate or straight edge.

Start out heavy scraping the ends to about 3" in on each end. Take impressions, and probably add on another 2"-3" to scrape. By then, you should start getting marks from end to end, not many, but a few. That will at least let you know where you stand on scraping.
Ken
 
Before I got my connelly book, I was able to sharpen my file to cut iron, ground the breast on the bench grinder, and ground the teeth off the back side, laid it on the surface grinder to make the ground off teeth area flat, then honed that to a slight reflection on my fine diamond knife sharpener, then began working the breast on the same sharpener, here's a tip, use a sharpie to color the breast so you can see that your actually honing the cutting edge, also drag the cutting edge on your thumbnail, if it will flake your nail, it should push cut iron, at least mine did, it even cut steel for a couple strokes before needing refreshed lol. I'll take some pictures here after a bit to help you out
 
Ulma, Richard king suggests spinning that motor to like 1500rpm, and also tilt the table down towards the wheel to avoid chipping the blade. Those were tips I read about from the master
 
here are the pictures and how my blade is sharpened, when honing the blade I would rotate it on the breast parallel with the radius, rather than how it says in the connely book, but also in the book it says to have a flat edge in the part I read, maybe I skipped a part because I listened to what RK said about radius size pertinent to what type of scrape your after, large radius for roughing and small radius for pin pointing. this radius is in the middle of the road I believe. first time ive made one, I just wanted to try it out before my sandvik scraper and blades arrive.

scraper1.jpg scraper2.jpg scraper3.jpg
 
Ulma, Richard king suggests spinning that motor to like 1500rpm, and also tilt the table down towards the wheel to avoid chipping the blade. Those were tips I read about from the master

Richard King said that 1500 RPM is too fast. You need to get the RPM down around 250-350 RPM. You're lapping the edge of the carbide with a diamond lap of about 600 grit. 1500 RPM will burn the edge to where it will not cut properly. Don't get me wrong here, you can make it work, but I've been in Richard's present and heard him say you need a diamond disk running at a lower RPM than standard motor RPM. The Glendo he carries around to his classes only turns around 250-350 RPM. I have an older model of one that looks like the Glendo and it turns around 250 RPM. Originally used to put an honed edge on carbide turning tools. Worked quite well on my scraping tools, too.
 
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Ulma, Richard king suggests spinning that motor to like 1500rpm, and also tilt the table down towards the wheel to avoid chipping the blade. Those were tips I read about from the master


I took RK's class too, here in CA

i patterned my sharpener off a glendo sharpener.
Glendo sharpeners operate at slow speeds
 
The speed thing must have been a typo then, but for sure it's recommended to tilt the table down towards the wheel to avoid micro chipping the carbide cutting edge
 
my motor is tipped to 3*, the table is flat.
the effect is the same, regardless of whether the table or the grinding stone is pitched.
the glendo sharpener had a perpendicular wheel and a tilting table
i have a perpendicular table and a tilting wheel, the effect is the very same 3* rake.
there are many ways of accomplishing the same thing regardless of professional opinion.;)
 
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