I dunno, I get these wild hairs up my ass, start looking around and wait until something affordable pops up.
They inevitably do.
I started to say I don’t remember where this particular hankering came from but it just hit me and now I do.
Last Summer the Wife and I went to this huge “Garage Sale” up at the Fair Grounds and I wound up bringing a couple of small old hand powered grinding wheels back home. That’s what started this.
All of a sudden I started wanting a real, old fashioned grinding wheel. Well, they are out there but they are expensive as all get out now too. On top of that, I don’t have room to get out in that garage as it is. So one day while I am looking for one I stumble across a little wet sharpener.
Hmm, that might do the trick. It was a nice one on Craigslist and the guy only wanted $40 for it. The timing was bad though. It was forty miles away and there was no way I could get there during the week. I sent the guy a message and told him it was a guaranteed sale if he still had it four days later when I could get there on my day off but if he could sell it before then just go ahead. Which he did, dang it.
Here about a week ago another one showed up on EBay but it was REALLY old and pretty clapped out looking. They only wanted $20 for it though. I waited a few days until the auction was almost up and threw a bid on it.
Sure as shootin’ I won it. The shipping was just as much as the grinder but for $40 here it comes and it showed up last Thursday while I was at work.
I didn’t even open it up until an hour ago.
Yeah, saying it is clapped out is being kind.
I have no idea just how old this thing is, I can’t find any info on the it but I see several more for sale that are absolutely identical except they have different company names on the castings.
There is at least 3/32’s wear inside the ring the shaft goes through on the handle side and the shaft just flops around inside them when you spin it, the end of the shaft where the missing handle attaches is all buggered up and right at the moment I have the wheel and shaft in the vise out in the garage with a couple of drops of WD-40 on the nut trying to loosen up the rust so I can get the shaft out of the wheel.
The board it was mounted to is cracked all to hell and will be a nice bit of kindling for my buddy.
All this for only forty dollars!
Um, yeah, before you start choking on the laughter?
I have been fucking with an “Upgrade” to the saddle on my little Chinesium Mini Lathe for over a month now and it is just kicking my ass.
It was supposed to be a little complicated according to the video that Mini Lathe Guru Steve Jordan put out over a year ago but it went South right out of the gate.
You can watch the video if you want to get an idea of what all was involved but keep in mind this is his second generation upgrade to the carriage. This builds on one he put out a long time ago where he puts studs in it but he took that video down. I had already done that one too before I decided to tackle this one.
The first five minutes of this will get you right up to speed.
Should be pretty simple right?
Remember where you are at.
The first thing I did was go have a bunch of steel cut.
Then using his measurements, I started making the slide that goes up underneath the inner edges of the ways.
I got this all done before I even laid a finger on my lathe.
My first mistake.
It never occurred to me that just maybe those Chinese bastards maybe might have changed some shit up in the parts they used to put these things together.
The minute I took the carriage off my lathe I knew I was a fucked duck and that this was going to be a MAJOR undertaking.
You see, the saddle on his lathe is basically a rectangle so it was no problem drilling a couple of holes out on the edges in the middle to bolt this sliding piece to.
I got my saddle off , took one look at it and said Oh Shit.
This is what mine looks like and this is straight off the Little Machine Shop parts page which means that this is the only style available now, which is exactly what I have.
Notice there is no metal in the middle of the damn thing on the outer edges?
Yeah.
Fuck me.
So I took the thing off, came up with an idea on how to fill those in but had to have my friend mill those openings out so that the edges were square. Then he machined some stock down to fill the holes. Except I cut one of them wrong, had to go buy some more stock, cut it again and hand fit both pieces to fit the openings because they were of course two different sizes.
That alone was two weekends of headaches.
I hand lapped that piece in the middle and it is a PERFECT fit.
Here are the filler pieces after hand fitting them then drilling while clamped to the saddle so they fit exactly where they are supposed to.
Then I had to hand lap everything to fit again.
Yanking back and forth on that thing until my tongue was hanging out.
It was necessary though as there were a couple of tight spots.
I also did the tail stock too because it never has fit right but that turned into a shit storm of it’s own and is going to have to be addressed later now.
So it was put it together, fit it, take it back off, put it back on, lap it, take it back off to find the tight spots and repeat until you hear cows bellowing outside the garage door wanting in.
Then there was the shimming.
Holy fuck what a nightmare that was and I do believe I am going to have to go back and do it again.
You might be able to see the shims in between the Brass slides I made for the first upgrade here,
All of this messing around trying to get rid of the slop in the carriage. They are NOTORIOUS for rocking back and forth, front to back and cocking side to side under a load..
I am still having some serious problems but part of that is because I shot myself in the foot by fucking with the tail stock at the same time. On top of that I am using a hunk of scrap stainless steel bar to use as a test bar and that shit doesn’t want to cut worth a damn in the first place. The excessive runout in the chuck caused by me crashing into it shortly after I got the thing is just gravy on top of everything else.
The carriage is jumping under power feed, it refuses to cut evenly and on top of that now there is a serious taper because the tail stock is out of alignment after I fucked it up when I was lapping it in using emery cloth face up on the ways. It kind of rounded out the leading and trailing edges of the Vee underneath the base of the tail stock, which ain’t that big to begin with.
The original machining underneath it looked like it had been done with a chain saw to begin with and it sat a full 1/8th of an inch high on one side from being flat and level.
A shitty casting followed up by shitty machine work.
A new base for that is in order and I will get one of those coming but for right now I still have several other more pressing issues to work out.
This little Mini Lathe is testing the limits of my patience at every step so far and I am writing this post right now as an excuse to get away from the motherfucker for a few minutes.
I was pretty close to opening the garage door and seeing just how far I could fling the little fucker a bit ago and decided I needed to step away and regain my composure.
If and when I ever get this little issue fixed there are eight more lined up right behind it.
The compound on these things are a joke, the quick change tool post I bought is a disappointment, I am hearing bearing noise out of the head stock and that whole thing needs to be torn apart and upgraded also.
Then there is of course the tail stock.
This miserable piece of shit is the perfect thing for me. I just love the never ending challenges it has to offer, it never will wind up being worth a damn plus I get to throw stupid amounts of money at it while cursing profusely using words never uttered by man before and making a big mess all at the same time.
