First off – a warning. Myford lathe chucks screw onto the mandrel, therefore DO NOT USE IN REVERSE, as I said I did last time.

Now, here is the first photo. Why a boring bar in a vice? Well, the finish on the outside of the wheel was not the best (somewhere near the worst) so I brought along my biggest bar. Easy, put into a tool holder and carry on. Not so lucky. Had to take quite a few file strokes to get it down to a size to fit. At least I took it off the two sides adjacent to the holding slit!

Outside finished to size and an insert tool being used to bring the web clean and to then bring the rim to finished thickness. The depth of the web to the edge can then be determined and taken down to the required size.

That’s it. One side of one wheel done. Will update again when all the other sides/wheels are finished and I can make a tool to take out the middle of the web.

Don’t forget that the workshop is open to all our members. You can use it for any of your larger requirements. A Bridgeport mill has been acquired and will be installed shortly to fit alongside our larger lathe, for those of you who already have a Myford. Please note, I have cleaned up, good workshop practice to leave it ready for the next operator.

Just ask.

Alan Hooper

Evening all

I thought it might be of interest to show how the Workshop is operating. Today, on a particularly wet morning during the maintenance Friday morning, I have brought to the site the rear wheel castings for the 1″ Minnie traction engine. Some of you will remember that I spent most of the last exhibition machining some of the castings. Well I thought that I should perhaps get the large rear wheels to the same ‘roughed out’ standard. Now I know most of you will have the necessary machinery to do this at home, but I don’t, having only a 2.1/2″ lathe.

This is our machine, a ML7, refitted back in the workshop. If you come up to the site, please be aware that there must be two people in the workshop. Just basic safety as it is not like being at home. You must also remember to bring any tooling required although for this machine there is a fairly extensive selection available. Measuring tools are also needed.

This photo shows what I brought up with me.

Now, not wanting to teach all you engineers how to suck eggs, I’ll just run through what the procedure was I used. Tool inserted into post. Casting mounted via the inside jaws. The hammer is there to knock the casting into a reasonably circular orbit and the chuck tightened.

Now, I only intend to rough machine these castings rather than do all the cutting in a single stage. Time consuming maybe, but a lot safer for those of self taught machinist! Unfortunately the topslide would not let me reduce the diameter across the complete face so another set was required.

This picture shows a boring bar mounted upside down and with the lathe running in reverse. Much to small a boring bar but nothing else was found on site and you guessed it, I didn’t bring one with me. It did it, though there is a lot of chatter marks.

I did have two more photos, but the site seems not to let me add them to this post. No doubt I’m doing something wrong – again. They where to show that the front face was cleaned back and lastly, because I had to leave early to return the car to ‘her indoors’, I did clean up the lathe. I do not want to be on the wrong side of the Workshop Manager!

I will continue this should anyone be interested.

Alan Hooper. Secretary