You mean you can make money in the home shop??? My first paid machining job...

John,
Thats a really nice nose assy. It is a blast when you can make a lil pocket change and help a bud out too. You really did an outstanding job reproducing the flange and nose too. I bet your freind will become one of your best customers with work like that. I'm sort of the same way about pricing as you, I charge too little but I don't charge for my learning time or tinkering time because it is a hobby for me and not a money maker. I still have a couple of my old customers beating on my door for bucket and blade rebuilds, but that is beyond my health limits right now. They have all indicated that they would be willing to wait till I fully recover, but that is a relative term for me anymore. It's great to have loyal customers who dont ask for estimates or haggle with price, they just want it fixed by you and let them know when it is ready. I worked a few years getting them to that point, but it is such a pleasure to do work for them now. They drop the equipment and I call em when I am done with it. They bring a check and another item to get rebuilt. Never have any issues or even a question about the work I do. I always do the little extras like paint and new grease fittings so when they pick up all they have to do is drop in the pins, secure them with locks and go to work. Doing that extra little bit has paid me dividends over the years and built my customer base to the point that I could have retired and just stayed home and done work like that when I felt like it. Unfortunately my health took a dump, so now I am limited in what I can take on safely and do in a reasonable time. They are still willing to wait, which continues to amaze me daily. Get a good rep for high quality work at a fair price and you will have more work than you ever wanted, it's what paid for every tool I have and I have a bunch. Keep up the great work, there are so few real craftmen out there any more, and we are a dieing breed.
Bob
 
Nice work there, John! You got $ and good karma outta that deal. You can't beat that. :thumbzup:
 
Nominated as my favorite project of the month. now I have to figure out how to vote for it. :thinking:

Roy
 
etard said:
Looks great, it would be nice to see your setup on the rotary table. How did you do the flange bolt ears?
Click to expand...

It's a bit hard to explain... What's clear from looking at the part is that the section of the OD in between the ears is cut by simply cranking the table and doing the same thing six times or every 60 degrees (0, 60, 120, 180, 240, 300). What's not so obvious is the the sides of the ears are parallel to a mill axis at sixty degree intervals offset by thirty degrees (i.e. 30, 90, 150, 210, 270, 330). That being the case it was just a straight feed to the radiused sections after repositioning the mill table.

This left me with ears that were shaped like trapezoids (looked like gear teeth). To round them, I made a simple fixture with a pin that engaged the hole in each ear. By pivoting the workpiece about this pin, the ears could be rounded off. I just used a disc sander for this and cleaned up the finish by light draw filing with a swiss file.

Make sense? It's kinda hard to explain in writing...

All: Thanks for the kind words!!! :))

John
 
Hi jgedde,
Lovely job on the nose piece, looks better than the original. Im sure you will be unindated with work once it gets out about the type of quality work you do.
Helping out friends can pay dividends, they tell others and work comes in. I have done the same and get asked to do small jobs all the time. One of my best customers is the place I work for, they ask me to fabricate or turn things for them and I invoice them and they pay into my Bank account and are happy to do so. People who I deal with at my work have also asked me to do odd jobs for them as they have found it hard to find Engineering Shops that will do their job or charge like a wounded bull.
I plan to keep doing this once retired as a source of extra income, something to keep me active and just love doing it.
What I love about Forums like this a great lot of people with many skills happily shareing their knowledge to help people like me when confrounted with a machining challange.

Regards,
Keith_W
 
John, beautiful work. As for "friend" pricing, anywhere from free to cheap is good for a time or two, with the understanding that the amount charged is confidential. You don't want hime telling stranger that you do machine work for cheap. When it becomes regular though I would work out another basis, something like "You know what you can charge for this Unobtanium part. Charge what you can, and pay me half that. "
 
Great Job man, I had a simular deal with the Nosecone on the supercharger for my Buick. I ended up Paying $720 for a replacement :(
 
Nice work John, very nice!

An excellent example of what can be done in the home shop, always very interesting to see what others are making.
My stuff always seems so ho-hum to me.
 
Nice job! I think anyone would have gladly paid twice that, and felt like they got a great deal to boot.
 
That is some nice work.
I take it you do it for a living as well above the thing of hobby.

Kind of sucks that they don't sell the parts separate though, a bunch of crooks then.

Sweet job.

Jeff
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top