What I have is a piece of 2 1/2in solid round bar and I want a 2in hole all the way thru it. My lathe is a 1948 monarch that when I bought it didnt come with a lot of tooling. I bought the lathe several years ago just to make some pins for trackhoes, backhoes, and the like, and didnt need a lot of tooling to get that done. I am not a machinist and really dont have a lot of experience using machining tools. With that said. I learned a lot from this experience, mainly why real machinist charge what they do. Setup time and actual time cutting 12 in deep holes isnt as easy or as fast as one would think. My lathe has the older rocker post tool holder. When ever I tried using the boring bar extended out to reach 12 inches deep, it wouldnt stay put in the rocker post. No level of accuracy at all. I also dont have any kind of coolant setup, which means I would cut for a bit and then have to wait for things to cool down before continuing. For the amount of time already spent, (I really didnt think it would take as long as it did), and knowing it would take equally as much time to do a second bushing, I just threw in the towel. I am sure with proper tooling I can bore this hole, and a lot faster than the time already spent, but I just aint willing to buy a $150 drill bit for a one time project. Especially when I can by enough DOM tubing to do both bushings for about $60. Thats the easier solution I think. Although, I will most likely purchase a better tool post sometime in the future, been planning on getting the tool post for some time now. It seems when I need it, I dont have it, and when i dont need it, I dont think about it.
I have a buddy that is the head of the machine shop for Moog, He was going to take it to their shop, which has millions of dollars worth of equipment, and even they didnt have the proper tooling for a 2 inch hole 12 inches deep, not what they do since most of the stuff they do is very small, so I dont feel real bad about not getting this done. What I have found out is having a lathe without tooling is like having a tractor without any attachments, Looks good setting there, but not worth much without a plow to hook behind it.