Life is a grind

Well, the bandsaw vise is working. I still need some blade adjustments to bet the thing to cut perfectly square. But this is for another day.  Today's post is about a grinder. Specifically I have a 4mm carbide end mill to deal with, for my Proxxon mill. The largest size collet I have for that mill is 3.2 mm which is 1/8" in RGU. So I propose to cut the shank down to 3mm to fit my next collet. I tried very hard to cut it down to 3.2 mm and failed. I cut a taper into it. Slipped in the collet.

Now you might say "you have a lathe, dummy! Just turn the shank down! Piece of cake!" Alas, the end mill is carbide. If I tried to cut it with even a carbide tool, I would ruin the shank, certainly the tool, and maybe even the lathe. Not an option!

The only way to do this with my equipment is with a toolpost grinder. But nobody makes one for the Taig. So I improvised one. I started with some 1/4" - 6.3 mm steel square bar from Lowe's. Nice nickel finish on it, too. The Taig toolpost takes this size. Ten second's worth of time with Handy Bandy cut it off. Then I milled the ends square.

 The basis for this gadget is the Dremel chainsaw sharpener. This gadget is lousy for chainsaw sharpening. But the Dremel screws into it. It is amazingly a metric thread, M19x2, which I cannot cut. It's very large and I have no such tap. So I bolted the sharpener bracket on my piece of bar. I put a dial indicator on the Dremel and on the chuck. Chuck ran out (was off center) .06 mm and the Dremel only .03. I was impressed by the Dremel. It took a lot of fiddling to get the holes in the bracket right in line.

In the end, it took a long time. The grinder does not like big cuts. Furthermore if the grinder axis is off-center you will grind a taper on the shaft. So you have to measure the shaft at root, middle, and end and adjust the toolpost accordingly. There is no way I can get a dial indictor into this setup, I sure tried enough, but no room. I practiced on a broken drill bit until I got the angles right. I wore out 3 grinding wheels in the process. Carbide is very hard. Also things tend to move. So it's grind, measure, reset, go again. Took, essentially, a full day.

But it worked. The new shaft fits, just, the 3mm collet, so I have a 4mm endmill at my disposal on Cecil B. de Mille.

Handy Bandy's vise, a long trip.

The saga of Handy Bandy's conversion into a cutoff saw continues. In this episode we relate that we were unable to find a suitable commercial vise for him; we were obliged to make out own. One of the hardest metalworking projects I have ever undertaken. At first I tried just clamping down the work and hoping for the best.

 Alas, this does not work. The bandsaw blade pulls left to right as you view the picture. It exerts enormous torque on the clamps. The work is pulled crosswise and the blade jams. This needs a proper vise. I looked all over the place and could not find a proper one. So I decided to make my own.

Long ago I found a couple of bedsteads thrown out by the wayside. With my trusty angle grinder I deconstructed the bedsteads and provided myself with a lifetime supply of angle iron, I am here to tell you, bedstead steel is super-excellent. I could make tools out of it, and will in the future. So the idea is this: we have a fixed jaw on a vise (angle iron). We have a movable jaw. Angle iron too. Finally we have an end block. For this I used 13 mm (1/2") square bar. I bought 10 foot of ths stuff for $7 from Fastnall in Wasilla. Now the whole megilla has to be lined up, clamped, and drilled in the proper place. It was quite difficult to keep the whole aligned as I drilled it:

 Now over to the lathe. We need some steel rod. I used hardware store stuff 12+ mm, not the best. I turned down the ends in the lathe to accept hardware store 10-32 screws and threaded then with a die:

 Now we put the whole thing together. We will have to tap the end block for a 1/4-20 (about M6x1) holdit-down screw, which I did, a real pain because I really don't have the proper size drills. I had the holdit screw nade up from a previous abandoned project.

And there is my vise. Now we have to countersink screw holes to take wood screws so I can hold down to the wooden block. Then use wood screws to hold it down. Then realize you need a shim under the movable jaw. Adapt a pice of aluminum. Then you have a vise.

And here is the end result. We have a little piece cut off on the bandsaw. Stiiting on the Al shim. It works. We need a bit of tuning but I have a working cutoff saw.

More to come.

Camera Repair

As I mentioned before my Nikon Coolpix had a latch failure. The tiny little latch that holds the battery lid in place was broken off when I dropped it on the floor. I have improvised with scotch tape -- not duct tape; it stretches too much. Time for a more secure fix. Obviously I cannot photograph any of this because the camera was kaput. But I can show you the result.

What I did is spend half the morning measuring the camera. I then put a screw through both lid and the plastic beneath. Little black thing lower right on Camera. It obviously has to be placed so that there is some "meat" underneath the hole, i.e. some plastic. We are running the risk of drilling into some very significant wire; but the camera did not work anyway, so what the hey! Now -- how to drill the hole? It must be drilled, or at least started,  on the Proxxon mill. I have .001 = .025 mm control on where I place the bit. I also have some tiny aircraft drill bits, Morse number 80 or so  (bigger the Morse number the smaller the bit; most confusing, about 0.6 mm) . The next problem is to drill the hole. My mill will not go high enough to go through lid and bottom. The lid, by the way, goes out and only then will it hinge.  So I put the hole on the bottom where I wanted it. After that I zeroed my dials so I could get back to the right spot. Then I closed the lid. Oh dear the bit broke when I cranked back. On a chance I said "maybe it will cut anyway." It did! Once you have a pilot hole it is not so hard.

What size screw? Well, I had #4-40 caphead screws, these are about 3mm and they worked. So after that I moved over to the drill press; drill and tap for #4-40, put in a screw.  A Coolpix costs about a hundred bucks. My repair is much cheaper. Even if I need an Allen wrench to change batteries. Thanks to John for photographing the repair.

Handy Bandy update

My camera has gone west. I have used Nikon cameras for a long time, ever since I bought my first SLR (remember those?) long ago. My first camera was a Rolleiflex. After that I bought Nikons. Used, of course. Even used they were better than the -- well, let us not mention brands. I had an F-1 and an F-2 -- but again let us not get sidetracked.

So in this age of digital photography I have bought two Nikon "Coolpix" cameras. I have gotten used to them. But alas, they lack vigor. I dropped my camera on a rug -- not a hard floor -- and the little latch that holds the battery in its place broke. The latch is tinware and plastic. It broke. So my camera is literally Scotch-taped together. This is why pictures will be very limited in this post. BTW, neither duct tape nor electrical tape will work to keep the batteries in place. Too stretchy, loses contact.

The real purpose of this post is to document progress on the bandsaw frame for Handy Bandy. John pointed out to me that I had the hinge and the bracket reversed, so the frame would not swivel 90 deg or more. So I did that, and now...

Voila, it works. More or less. I had to take off the cheapo "fence" that comes with it, it wouldn't clear. I made a replacement out of aluminum angle. I blew the first edition,  but it is serving as a stop. I  use some small C-clamps to clamp my stock.
The stock is held in the "vise block," a glued-up collection of particle board attached to the base by wood screws, AKA clamps. But I cannot place this block until I get a permanent vise. I have no idea what the vise will be.  

This is a nuisance. I need a proper vise. A small one. I hope I don't have to make one, because making a vise is no mean task. Until I get a vise, this thing is a nuisance. It is hard to get it set up just right, unless you are Zaphod Beeblebrox and have three hands (A Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams).

But it is still, as it stands, much faster (or at least less work) than a hacksaw. I hate hacksawing, it is a lot of work!

Handy Bandy gets a frame

Of all tasks in metalworking, cutting off metal so you can work it, using a hacksaw, is by far the most tedious and exhausting. So... is there a better way? Well, there is an angle grinder. But this is wasteful, noisy, and also hard to hold.

You may remember my portable bandsaw. I bought it really cheap at a pawn shop. As far as I can tell, it was brand new. But it is a difficult tool to hold by hand. I called it Handy Bandy; I thought I would use it for timber framing. But it is much too difficult to hold by hand. So I thought I would build a stand for it. Thus it would become a cutoff saw.

There are literally hundreds of such stands on the net. But most of them require welding. I can't do that. But one design was build mostly from wood; it came with instructions and photos. As it turns out a lot of the stuff is wrong or outdated. Never mind. The point that you must bear in mind is that Handy's blade is tilted 45 deg from the vertical. Why? I don't know. Maybe they thought  it was easier to start the cut. But what I want is a cutoff saw. So I have to tilt the saw 45 deg off the vertical.

The key of the design I followed is to build a bracket and some clamps that tip Handy over 45 deg. This involves bending a piece of steel strap to very precise dimensions. In order to do this, grooves are milled in the strap. On my micromill this is not easy (especially because I broke my 1mm cutter) but it can be done. The grooves cause the metal to bend where you want it.

 The next job is to heat the metal up and bend it. I used two propane torches. The 90 deg bend is easy The other two are at 45 deg from the vertical. They are harder. But crucial. When the bend is complete the bracket looks like this:

Now we build a block of wood to get the bandsaw up high, so it can pivot. An ordinary hinge is used to get the pivot. Even without the hinge, you can see Mr Bandy is now tipped over 45 deg. And I have not discussed the clamps, I omitted to get pictures of the process; which involved a whole lot of hacksawing!

So now we build up a wooden block to hold Handy off the base (which we cut out of particle board). Observe the hinge. We bolt one leaf down to the block; the other is bolted on to the bracket. There's the pivot.

Next step, we build up another block to hold the bandsaw vise. Which I don't have. Nor have I bolted anything down to the stand. So I clamped up a lashup to try to cut aluminum. Astute observers will notice I am doing something wrong.

Nevertheless it cut off a piece of aluminum (very tough stuff, this particulat piece)
in much, much less time than I could do it with a hacksaw. Note that I have removed the fence from the bandsaw.

When I did a piece of steel it almost got there but at last minute it twisted and broke the blade. It dawned on me then that I am cutting at the wrong end! I should have been at the right end, close to the primitive fence on this bandsaw; in fact I should have put the fence back on! Then the blade will pull the work into the fence and keep it from swiveling.  However, this is very promising.

I have not included a link to the original writeup. Partly because a lot of it is not right. If you search for "portable bandsaw stands" you will find it.  However I spent a lot of today (raining heavily) in reformations. More to come.

The Shinto temple, er, table.

The time has come,  the Walrus said, to make a table to support my grinders. I have two of them. I have far too much space in my hallway for a computer. It is currently held up by a door on sawhorses. Far too wide. So I decided to shorten it up and stick in a table wide enough to hold my wet and dry grinders. I had originally decided to use power tools on it. And of course I am using other people's offcuts, i.e. scrap. This means so-called "2x4 lumber." A few moments with a ruler will convice you that modern 2x4 are nowhere near that dimension. This is a way the lumber companies can get a little more lumber out of a log, at your expense. The modern 2x4 is something like 39mm x 88 mm give or take a whole millimeter. Convert it yourself if you want; I don't use RGU. But its not even a 2:1 aspect ratio.

Now my bandsaw will not take the 88mm width -- it is 3" or about  77mm. In retrospect there is a way around this; I could have "housed"  the joints -- but at that point I decided to build this thing by hand tools only. I am glad I did. I learned a great deal. Not the least, how to operate a Japanese ripsaw correctly. I am grateful to Roy Underhill on pbs.org for some very useful tips. But I can now rip to within a half-millimiter over a 90 mm length. I could not do that when I started this project. Unfortunately I did not document it. I thought it was going to be a one-morning knockout project. I will have to do a future post on how to do these joints, this is really timber framing and a useful art to acquire. This is a lot like building a Shinto Temple. This is an art which requires master carpenters. No master, I, but at least I  learned something. I cut whole thing together piece by piece. When all was done I put it together. And it fit together.

Layout is 90% of the problem in timber framing. For this you need a very acccurate pencil. The Japanese use a bamboo brush, or sumisashi. I found out that a "Sharpie" thin marker works very well indeed, as long as you hold it properly against the square.The tip of the Sharpie is less than 1 mm wide.

I am really glad I did this the hard way, and I hope to do a post on how to cut these particular joints in the future -- since I did not document this project. Today I pegged these joints; hopefully I'll cover that in the future.

The Garden, 2014, part 1 of ?

This post is long overdue. We started the garden early this year. Unlike last year, it was not wet. Last frost in late may, maybe around May 15th. Very favorable. First job is to fork up the soil. Some people use a tiller for this. This is essential for new rows, but for old rows I think  it is too violent. I use the old-fashioned spading fork. Then I spread manure, bought at Lowe's because I cannot generate enough compost. The  Alaska climate is, as we all know, very harsh. The   growing season is short -- and so is the composting season. My compost grows very slowly!  Anyway, the manure is mixed in. By hand. The result is nice, neat rows. No weeds, yet.

Then we put in the transplants. These have been sitting in the windowsills since early March.

I always cloche my transplants.Now cloche is a French word; it means "bell". The French, and later all European countries, used glass mini-greenhouses to get an early start on their veggies. These resembled bells; hence their name. Nobody makes them anymore; but on the other hand  there is an unlimited supply of transparent plastic, in my case old fruit juice containers. I run them through a bandsaw and slice off tops and bottoms. This protects the plants. I have seen frost on June 6! These pix were taken late May. If there had been a frost, my transplants probably would survive. They seem to like the cloches. It is almost time to remove their trainer wheels :). I always think I have far too many cloches, but I either break even or have too few. Drink more apple juice, JRC!

The rest of my stuff I start from seeds. I use my trusty Earthways seeder. I will have to do a post on this marvellous device. I was concentrating on what I was doing and did not get any pictures. Shame on me. The seeder saves days of handwork.

As I write some of the seeds are coming up. And I have been weeding already; dockweed is your deadly enemy. If you want to learn more about these techniques go read Eliot Coleman's books. He gardens in Maine, and that is almost as bad as Alaska.