drilling a hole 12inches deep???

[muddstopper]

OK, after seeing a picture, I understand a little better. Dont have the clamps to make this work, but now I see how it works. Going to go watch a few youtube videos now and see what other tricks I can pick up.

 

[Mysfyt]

Nice looking lathe, Pycoed! The cross feed looks unconventional though. I own three lathes with the standard tee slot for the QC or old lantern post tool holder and they don't offer much in the way of clamping for such a set up. What kind of lathe is it. Sorry, don't mean to hijack this thread.

 

[muddstopper]

Talk about getting interested in machining video's. Fell asleep last night in my chair watching all kind of vid's of running a lathe. Woke up at 5am with a broke neck. Learned a bunch, altho I have not tried out anything yet. Now that I know some of what can be done, I think I will just build a steam engine next wk, hour or two should be all it takes. JK. I did see how some of the things I have been wanting to do are done. Just been afraid to try in the past. I did win the ebay bid on the drills, just dont know if they have the proper taper to fit my machine. Cutting tapers seem fairly easy enough to try, going to practice on some round stock first, but just wondering if trying to recut the tapers on drill bits if I might run into the metal being to hard to do and whether to use HHS or carbide cutters.

 

[Mysfyt]

The shanks are machinable on decent quality drills. I used carbide to cut some of mine down. I should add that they are case hardened and get easier to machine once your in .030" or so.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Keep your eye on Ebay and you can buy used tooling for pennies on the dollar. What you needed initially was a good spade drill and coolant. Do 6" from each end.

PS, I have a lathe and no tooling at home. Not even hooked up yet to 3 phase. Mainly because I manage a shop and have everything I need at work for "government" jobs.

If somebody walked up to me and asked me to quote your job, I would probably estimate about $300 (if I already had the spade toolholder and a lathe with a big enough hollow spindle). People don't understand how expensive tooling is these days.

 

[muddstopper]

No doubt about it, buying a lathe is the cheapest part of this hobby. Tooling is where the money is. What I found really interesting is just what little amount of tooling is needed for some of the simple things I want to do. Its not so much what you have, but how you use it. I knew you could cut tapers with a Lathe, but I always thought you needed a taper attachment do it, After watching a few videos, I now know all You have to do is spin you compound around and cut from the end. Want to cut a gear, Lock the lathe head and just use a cutting bit to broach out the pattern. Stuff like this I didnt know before starting this deep hole project,. Oh, I also found out how to make my own boring bar. They say a good machinist can take a lathe and build every part for a lathe. I probably wont ever get to that level, but I'll practice and should be able to take care of most of my machining needs.

 

[pycoed]

Nice looking lathe, Pycoed! The cross feed looks unconventional though. I own three lathes with the standard tee slot for the QC or old lantern post tool holder and they don't offer much in the way of clamping for such a set up. What kind of lathe is it. Sorry, don't mean to hijack this thread.

It isn't my lathe! That's a Myford (7" swing) from a Google search for a line boring image. I have three - a Drummond (7" swing) dating from 1905 which is in poor condition, a Kerry AG23 (11" swing) which is my usual goto, & a Harrison 11" with metric leadscrew.
(Kerry & Harrison are standard industrial lathes from the 1960's/70's you can see them all on Lathes)

Lots of UK lathes were fitted with cross slide tee slots, probably because milling machines weren't as common in UK as over the pond- at least in little one man band machine shops & hobbyists. The lathe was used for everything!
There's excellent info available on some of the model engineering sites for "unconventional" lathe use, also some of the little engineering booklets dating either side of WWII are mines of information on how to set up & machine awkward bits.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

We need to lobby for a machining zone here

 

[downsizingnow48]

We need to lobby for a machining zone here

Agree would be very interesting and helpful. I think a lot of TBN folk have excellent, practical machining experience and all could learn by sharing more.

 

[bigdeano]

Here's a picture of me boring out a motorcycle engine cover for a different size water pump seal. It's bolted to a makeshift angle plate, and the boring bar is in the chuck. The engine is in my garden tractor, so maybe it's ok to post it on a tractor forum.