Steady Rest Redux, and some misadventures

I really started out to make a feed screw for the Taig lathe. Really I did. What I have found out about this machining business is that to make A, you have to first make B. However, that entails making C and D and so on, so sometimes you lose track of where you are.

I actually did make a feed screw. It was a 1/4"-20 RGU feed screw, approx. M6x1. It was far too flimsy.  I knew it had worked for Dean over on  http://www.deansphotographica.com/machining/projects/projects.html (look under "feed screw for the Taig lathe") but I found it very wobbly. So I needed a bigger screw. I am limited by ready availability, so maybe M10x1 would do it. Not for sale at Home Depot. Maybe 3/8"-16? This is about M10x0.75. But, here comes the problem, I cannot get a 3/8 screw through the bore of a Taig, so ... we need a steady rest. I made one before, see label "steadyrest", but it is too flimsy, just like the 6mm feedscrew. 

I had used a wood-turning attachment as the base of the old steady. It worked. But not really steady enough for what I want. So first I have to make the slide. This is a 45 degree dovetail slide, about 7mm on perpendiculars. So I set out to make the slide.

I had some 1/2" (12+mm) steel so I traced the outline of the old slide onto the new stock. Then I had to mill it out. And now we come to making C. I wanted to use my new Christmas present, a 4mm endmill. The bigger the endmill, the less work. But Cecil B. de Mille cannot chuck a 4mm bit.The biggest chuck is 3.2 mm or 1/8" RGU.

Now you cannot possibly turn down a 4mm mill shank down to 3.2 mm, even with carbide tools. The stuff is much too hard. But you can grind it down. So I mounted my trusty Dremel on the cross-slide. The adapter you have seen before, it is part of a chainsaw sharpening attachment. It ate the grinding wheel to a nub, but it worked. Sort of. Alas, I had a taper on it. It is very difficult to get the Dremel exactly parallel to axis of lathe. I finally set up a dial indicator.

I am getting far too much runout. (Off-center error), 0.1mm or so.  I actually did grind it down to 3.2 mm at base, but it tends to squeeze out of the chuck. Disaster. Time for another plan. 

I set up the vertical milling attachment on the Taig and put a really big (12mm) bit in the chuck. This is a no-no. You are not supposed to do this. I did it anyway and it worked.  So I "hogged out" most of of the slide by this method. I must say it was a pleasure to take really big cuts. By my standards anyway. So now we can clean up on Cecil. I put the bar right on the table and held it down with toe clamps, just like the big boys on YouTube.

The next job is to cut the 45 deg slots for the dovetail. The big boys use dovetail cutters. I haven't one; and it would never fit in my mill anyway, so we improvise. Using a protractor we tilt the piece to 45 deg and mill straight down.

Here you see the first dovetail cut. I am setting up for the second. Tomorrow, all deities willing, I will start cutting it. Then I can worry about the rest of the steady rest. Then I can worry about the feed screw. Whay did I ever take up machining? Because, in the end, it is fun. Getting to the end may not be so much fun, and is sometimes very frustrating. Life, after all. 

Chain Mail, the coda

So we come to the end of the chain mail saga. I have made enough rings to go around the earth, or so it seems. One last thing to make. It is only fortunate that the recipient does not read my blog. She is much too busy! This number is a fine-mesh, 3/8" or about 10 mm as opposed to my usual 13mm rings. It is harder to do the small rings than the big ones. I have tried 6mm rings and I consider it almost impossible.

 As usual it is a pendant plus a chain. All in 4:1 mail, which means that each center ring links four side rings.

In this piece, the center rings are copper -- salvaged electrical wire -- and the others are steel, 14 gauge fencing wire. Very cheap stuff. I like the contrast. There are two pieces. the pendant and the chain to go around the neck. Here is the pendant. I like the contrast of copper and steel. Picture has a slight yellow cast to it. Sorry. Blame auto-exposure.

 The chain is single-strand 4:1 chain mail. If you were making this for protection you would not use copper, you would use all steel. But I'm making it for decoration. I want it to look nice; protection is merely symbolic.

The wire at the top of the pendant is there to stiffen it up. It does tend to sag, but I think I will remove the wire and just put in two more linking rings into the top.

And I am now really through with chain mail. If disaster comes and we all revert to the middle ages, at least I could make a living as an armorer. Although by now I am quite deft at this, it is very labor-intensive. But then, another word for the middle ages is labor-intensive. No machinery allowed. Glad I did it, but enough is enough. Now back to other things, such as my clock.

The mail must move!

Christmas is over. So everyone has their presents. So now I can show some of the constructions! For my daughter I made a copper/brass mail thingie. Call it a necklace or call it a wall hanging, doesen't matter. Didn't get pictures of it. Here are some of the construction steps for another one.This is for a dear friend. It is a "necklace" of sorts. It could also be used for a wall hanging. It is made out of salvaged copper wire.  And other things.

I made a maltese cross out of sheet copper that I happened to find in an antique shop! In the middle of it is a mandala. Well, maybe it isn't really a mandala. It is in fact a piece  of a defunct VCR player, which I deconstructed. Remember those? Does anyone remember a videocassete? The coil  was so elegant that I knew its ultimate fate was to become a mandala. Sitting off to the right is the neck chain. This is a copper/brass single-strand contraption. In order to be artistic it was very, very slender wire, what bead-stringers use. One uses what one can find in Alaska. It was so flimsy I had to solder all of the brass rings. This was a lot of work, but I couldn't have things coming apart. Unseemly language was used in the construction. Contrrary to popular belief, it does not help at all, but  it eases frustration.

Fortunately my butane torch behaved itself, as it seldom does in winter. I used silver solder, much stronger than the lead solder used for electrical work.

Above, the top of the "necklace" has had a wire rod soldered to it. This will keep it from sagging. The neck chain has been tied in and soldered. I happen to like the intersection of art and technology. Just as well, because otherwise this piece would have driven me crazy.

I really like this piece. It is all proper chain mail. It is also symbolic, but I will leave this aspect to the art critics. They have to make a living too, after all.

A post where I don't tell you anything!

Beacuse if I did tell you what I am doing it would spoil Christmas. I am making chain mail, though. I already told you that, no surprise. Fluffy is getting something different. This chain mail thing is really interesting and has lots of possibilities. But it is really labor-intensive and time-consuming. No doubt armorers in the middle ages got quite wealthy turning out these hauberk things!

But it is all great fun. Be back after Christmas, unless weather intervenes, which it usually does in Alaska. Always safe to talk about weather.

Back again soon. Your friendly armorer wishes you a merry Christmas.

Chalupy makes Chain Mail

Now you all know what chain mail is. You have seen hundreds of movies and TV stuff, assuming you watch TV,  of various mideval or even renaissance shows, all featuring chain mail. But until very recently I had not really given it any thought.  It is all Fluffy's fault. She became enamored of Thor. We all know that Thor is a Nordic godlike figure, currently on his way to becoming a cult. . Coincidentally I had been reading, for the fifth time at least, S. M. Stirling's "Change" novels. Here evil aliens or possibly super-powers destroy the world. Electricity and gunpowder do not work. Hey, fantasy. But the survivors (they are few) have to learn how to make chain mail -- we are back to the middle ages or worse. So how do you make chain mail, anyway? I got curious. I was hooked.

There is an enormous amount of stuff on YouTube and the internet  in general on the subject. It is an active subject to say the least. For this reason I will not bore you with details. But it is a skill like any other; takes some time to acquire. Now chain mail is all about rings, right? So my first try involved making some rings. Now the YouTube and other stuff suggests that you make your stuff out of 13mm (1/2 " RGU)  wide links. So I happened to have a such an animal in my scrap repertoire. I also had a  bunch of salvaged copper wire. So I followed the YouTube directions. I did not use the jigs they recommend, nor will I.

 Instead I chucked my 13 mm rod in the lathe. I disconnected the belt, because I am afraid of taking an eye out by powering it. I wound a bunch of 12 gauge wire (salvaged, of course) onto it. The rod is called a mandrel, by the way.

Next, the thing is cut into rings , for which you really need bolt cutters. Available at any Home Depot or Lowe's. Next thing to do is to assemble the rings intto mail  I am using a four-on-one pattern. You will find very clear directions on the 'net. The only thing I will add to that is that it is a lot like weaving. One mistake in a weave and you ruin the whole thing! It took me a couple of weeks to get the hang of it  But at the end I had quite a creditable section of chain mail. In copper (salvaged) wire, of course. This is Thor's armband, and it will eventually be a circle, because Thor, of course, has scale mail. As the Romans called it, she wears a Lorica squamata. (Tunic of scale mail). But the ends of her Lorica can be chain mail.

The tooling is really minimal. You need a couple of pliers for the stuff shown here. That's it. And, of course, bolt cutters and a mandrel of course. The YouTube videos show people making mail out of 14 Gauge fence wire. But I can already tell you this: if you make a complete hauberk out of steel wire you are entitled to charge $1000 (in today's devalued dollar) for it. It is reallly grunt work.

To say more would give my whole Christmas gig away. Sorry. You are all geting chain mail stuff, but not  Fluffy. I just exhibited your mail. You get something else.

The End of fall

A few weeks ago, we had torrential rain. We were flooded. We had to pump out the basement.

Fluffy is standing in on Basargin road, wearing my Extra-Tuff boots (tm), also known as Sitka Slippers. Marvellous things, highly recommended. Especially if you live in the Panhandle (Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan, ... ). But I did not think you needed Willow Waders! Surprise. It's Alaska. The weather is, well, highly variable.

Our driveway was a little better. But not much. Actually this is "Basargin Loop" which is not a loop. Maybe it was a loop on the plans of the Village. My driveway goes off it. But since I have to get out of this loop, it might as well be my driveway. Technically it's a "private road". The Beneficient State of Alaska does not plow here. The weather allowed enough time for the tout ensemble to freeze up. Fortunately. And at long last.

On Sunday, actually Saturday night, it started to snow. Or maybe rain. Or both. One of those borderline situations. So my daughter was out here and John and Fluffy in Anchorage, and my daughter had to go to work on Monday. Hmm. By noon there was 10 cm snow. Not enough to block getting out, but enough to worry about. So we piled into her car -- Princess, a super Volvo --and drove to Anchorage. Princess is superb. I wish I had a Volvo. But not a Princess. What I want is a Valp. But due to our over-regulated existence, I can not get one legally in the USA. A pox on all governments. When we passed Big Lake it was raining and not snowing. That night it snowed and snowed. Next morning John and Fluffy went out and decided that Anchorage was impassable. I think the Glenn Highway must have been disasterville. So we stayed over.

Tuesday we started back. The roads were passable. We drove John's car Brutus, a Ford Explorer 4WD. It has really good ground clearance. I might not have made it in Vicky the Vitara. When we got here we had quite a sight.

As far as I can tell we are still 10 cm on the snowpole. This shot is south of the house. I took it today, so my ski tracks show. I can ski again! Oh joy. But the house was literally freezing (0C). so the first thing I did was to light off the heat. My oil stove dates from the flood -- brought over by the pilgrims. I love it. No moving parts. No electricity needed. No thermostat, either. If you are too cold, turn it up. Or build a fire in the stove. So by evening it was 11C in the house; much better than 0C.

Today John and Fluffy blew out the driveway.

The snow splitter is doing its job. It provides, as a bonus, a lovely place to put your skis on. It was wonderful to ski again. I love to ski. My hands froze, of course. I did not go far but I propose to take things easy at first. I would much rather ski than walk. But you can't overdo it. Not at my age, anyway.

 It is supposed to precipitate today. But this is Alaska. What the weather will do is out of human control. We will see what happens tonight.

Rain, rain and a Halloween Party

Yesterday  it started to rain. The forecast warned "heavy at times." It sure was. Our basement is flooded. We are currently pumping it out. Our hot water heater went on strike. Fortunately matters were amicably resolved. But it was hairy while the strike lasted. October has not frozen very much, amazingly; but it has been very rainy. Most unusual. The rain is a sign that it will not be too cold. After all, if it was too cold, it'd be snowing.

To distract us from these watery matters, John had a Haloween gig. Costume was the order of the day. So Fluffy went to the gig as a Dalek. Dr Who fans will know what I mean.If you don't know consult the Internet!  John and Fluffy made the costume out of odds and ends -- styrofoam balls, tea lights a paint roller and a plumber's plunger. And paint. Not far, in fact, from what the BBC (Britons read "Beeb") did with the original Daleks. Nowadays they can use graphic arts. Or 3-D printing for all I know.

John, on the other hand, opted for the chicken suit. He always said that if all else fails, including music, he'll go out and wear a chicken suit.

And wear the chicken suit he did. I cannot resist it. Fowl play, indeed. You cannot imagine the bad puns that the chicken suit has inspired. The gig, I understand, went swimmingly and there was even someone there dressed as Dr. Who!

So the Dalek was right at home. And the chicken crossed the road. And everyone was happy until it rained and rained. And fortunately the rain has let up, and maybe we can get the basement pumped out. I'm glad I bought a pump.