-Dallen

Was kind of working holiday: had to work on finishing off the decoration and furnishing of our part-time home in Spain - putting in/up wardrobes, building a mock fire-place (unfotunately, we can't have real one there), etc.; jumping up and down the ladder at around 30°C made me loose some 4 kg in weight - feeling a lot fitter than before the holidays - but have been to the beach only once ... grilling on the beach in the August heat is for German and British tourists only anyway
 
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The milling spindle will be secured in its place between the two brackets by a lever-actuated excentric bolt that pushes it down. I found a rough excentric bolt in my scrap-box of odd lathe parts, but it would have been as easy to start from scratch. The excentric was worked over holding the bolt in the 3-jaw-chuck with a brass-shim to give the off-set.
 

Rough and ready method for excentric turning
 
The head was turned with the help of the shop-made radius-turning tool (which I originally made to be able to turn miniature door-knobs and the likes). The tool-bit diameter was chosen to match the neck and shoulder of the bolt. The turning operation was followed by smoothing with wet-and-dry paper and steel-wool of various grades. Finally, it was polished with polishing paste. The pictures below show the various steps of this machining process:
 

 

 

 

 

 
To be continued ...

Now, with the summer holidays behind me, I am back in the fora and in the workshop   However, first a little postscript on things that were completed before the vacations:
 
A couple of pictures that show the different components of the y-axis spindle. Also visible on the first picture are the parts of the friction brake for the dial, short piece of acrylic rod that is pressed down on the spindle with a set-screw. Tightening or loosing the screw allows to adjust the friction.
 

The parts of the y-axis spindle
 

Spindle assembled
 

Spindle in its working place
 
To be continued ...

The blank on its arbor was then transfered to the dividing apparatus on the milling machine for engraving the dial. For this a 15° engraving bit was used. in the same set-up the hole for the friction brake of the dial was pre-drilled.
 

Set-up for engraving the dial
 

Engraving the dial
 
The numbers were stamped in a make-shift set-up in a vice. In order to ensure that the number-stamps were applied exactly radially a purpuse-made guide-block was used.

Set-up for stamping the dial
 
Finally, the dial was mounted back on the arbor and the burrs from engraving and stamping cleaned up with a couple of light cuts in the lathe.
 

Cleaning up the engraved and stamped dial
 
The two parts were separated on the lathe with a jewelers saw substituting for a parting tool. The dial then was degreased and the engravings laid out in black enamel paint. After the generously applied paint had dried, the dial was cleaned up with very fine wet-and-dry sanding paper.
 

Painting the dial
 
To be continued ...

Per, as it never was, the mill doesn't have a price-tag   ... unless you were indeed prepared to pay me at my commercial rates, which means that you would have to trade-in a decent car, may not quite an Aston Martin (but I would gladly exchange it for the mill, BTW)
 
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For the dial on the y-slide I had a piece of 21 mm diameter brass to hand. This was faced in the 3-jaw-chuck, drilled and reamed for the 5 mm spindle, and then bored out to fit over the spindle bearing-plate.
 

Preparing the blank for the dial
 
The blank was the mounted on an arbor with a 5 mm stem so that I could turn the outside shape. At one end there is the notorious convex knurled ring. For this, a ring of 1.2 mm width and 1 mm height was left standing with edges slightly chamfered.
 

Turning the blank for the dial
 
For the next machining step the knurling tool with the concave knurl was mounted to the cross-slide. The knurling tool was fed slowly into the slowly rotating blank. It catches quite quickly at the edges and the pattern evolves fast. As expected, the processes is both, a cutting as well as a shaping one – the relatively soft being squeezed into the indentations of the knurling wheel. While generously lubricating with WD40 the knurl was fed into the faster rotating blank until the pattern had developed fully.
 

Knurling the dial
 
To be continued ...

Thanks Pat and I hope you have enough Kleenex around
 
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After some disruptions due to travelling (spent inter alia a couple of days in Pisa for work ) I tackled a job I had never done before:
 
Digression: making a concave knurling wheel
 
Today, concave knurls to produce the convex knurling seen on many older high-end precision machines are obtainable only at prohibitive costs. Therefore, I embarked on making my own knurl, encouraged by a few examples on the Internet. Knurling wheels normally have to have a certain diameter in order to prevent their bore from being distorted under the stress of the knurling process. I choose a blank of only 10 mm diameter for a bore of 6 mm in order to reduce the mass to be heated, when attempting to harden the knurl with my rather limited heating capabilities. I also had a cut-off from a Schaublin collet-blank available, which I assumed would harden nicely.
 

Hobbing the knurl on the milling machine
 
The proposed process of creating the knurling wheel employs an ordinary threading tap as an improvised hob. This, stricly speaking, would result in a 'rope' knurl, but the helical angle of a, say, 0.4 mm pitch tap is barely perceptible. The easiest way to hold the blank for cutting seemed to hold it in the knurling-holder for the watchmakers lathe that I made a few years ago. This means, however, that the process could not be done on the lathe, because it would have been not so easy to mount the holder on its side. Cutting the knurl on the lathe would have been better, as the end of the tap could have been supported in the tailstock in order to eliminate flexing. Unfortunaly, the DIXI horizontal mill does not have an overarm, which then would make it the ideal machine for the job. So the job was done on the vertical mill.
 

Hobbing process in detail
 
The blank was drilled and reamed for the arbor of the knurling tool holder. Some polishing ensured that it spun freely. A M2 tap was chucked in a collet as short as possible and offered to the blank with its uppermost end in order to keep flexing to a minimum. Initially, the mill was run at slow speed and with a small feed. After each incremental feed, the blank was allowed to make several revolutions until no chips were produced anymore. Once the pattern was created, the mill was run at a somewhat higher speed and the amount of incremental feed increased from around 0.03 mm to 0.05 mm. Every time blank and tap were flooded with WD40 in order to wash out the chips that then were wiped off. A first failed trial showed, how important it is to wash-out chips. The second attempt was successful.
 

The finished concave knurl
 
After the machining, the knurl was hardened by heating it to a cherry-red colour and quenching it in ice-cold water. As I don't have a very strong torch, the knurl was pre-heated to 450°C using the hot-air soldering gun and then brought to temperature with the gas-torch. The knurl was also rubbed in soap to prevent scaling. After some cleaning, the hardened knurl was tempered to a straw-yellow colour using the the hot-air gun. A test with a file showed that the hardening was successful.
The knurl in the tool-holder for the watchmakers’ lathe
 
... well, it actually worked as you will see in the next contribution
 
To be continued ...

The original bronze spindle-nut seems to have had a left-hand thread of 4 mm x 1 mm, so it was drilled out 3.7 mm for the 4.5 mm x 1 mm thread and the thread re-cut with the appropriate tap. The odd digs and dents were removed by a light cut on both ends in the lathe.
 

Parts of the spindle and its bearings
 
A test assembly showed that everything worked as planned. The ball-handle crank has been bought-in and is fixed by set-screws, rather than being pinned as was the Lorch-practice.
 

Spindle in place, but micro-meter sleeve still to be made
 
To be continued ...

The long hole for the spindle in the cross-slide was opened up to 5 mm using the Dixi horizontal miller as a boring mill.
 

Drilling out the the spindle hole in the old top-slide
 
However, the travel of the slide was too small, so an extension was made to give the slide a travel of around 50 mm, allowing the milling spindle to reach across a face-plate mounted in the dividing attachment on the mill. The extension is a fairly complex piece, fashioned out of a block of aluminium. This is jointed to the existing top-slide with two location pins and two countersunk screws (the holes used were already made by a previous owner).
 

Top-slide extension (under side)
 

Top-slide extension (upper side)
 
To it screws the housing for the y-spindle bearing. Watchmakers lathes usually have simple sliding bearings there, the end-play of which is controlled by a nut with a very fine thread. The elements of this arrangement would have been ground to give a smooth sliding. I decided instead to use miniature thrust-bearings with I.D. of 5 mm and an O.D. of just 10 mm. Two are needed, with the thrust-collar on the spindle in between. This gives an arrangement of 12 mm in length.
Centering the future y-slide spindle bearing-plate in large 4-jaw-chuck
 

Turning stub for spindle bearing-plate
 
The bearing-housing was made from a piece of 15 mm x 15 mm aluminium bar. The section was centred in the large 4-jaw-chuck on the lathe and the stub turned on. The piece then was reversed and taken into a 3-jaw-chuck so that the face that screws down onto the slide extension could be turned flat and perpendicular to the axis. The through-hole was drilled and reamed for the spindle. In the next step the seat for the bearings was bored out to exactly 10 mm diameter and a tad unter 12 mm depth.
Reaming bearing for y- spindle
 

Boring-out seats for thrust ball-bearings
 
Finally some cosmetic milling operations gave the bearing housing a more elegant shape.

Shape milling of the spindle bearing-plate
 
To be continued ...

While sorting out the replacement motor for the mill, I turned my attention to making the spindle for the y-axis. Most WW-lathes seem to have the odd thread of 4.5 mm x 1 mm pitch. The spindles from the old cross-slide I am using were missing, but must have been thinner, probably 4 mm. As I have both, a die and a tap for the usual left-hand thread, I decided to adapt the cross-slide for this.
 

 

Set-up for cutting the thread on the y-axis spindle
 
 
First the spindle was made. Unlike the original desing on watchmakers’ lathes, it will have two ball-races as thrust bearings, but otherwise the design will be similar. The ball-handle crank is a commercial product. I started out with a 5 mm rod and turned it down to 4.5 mm and then set-up the lathe for cutting the left-hand thread.
 

The first pass
 

Almost finished spindle
 
This means cutting proceeds towards the tailstock. As the torque on the WW-lathe transmission system is too low, the thread was cut by hand-cranking. For this purpose I had made an adapter for a ball-handle crank already a long time ago. The thread was cut with full cuts until it was about 90% complete.
 

Calibrating the thread using a 4.5 mm x 1 mm die in the tailstock
 
The final cut then was made with a die in the tailstock die-holder to calibrate the diameter, which might have been a bit bigger in the middle due to the flexing of the long spindle. In order to eliminate the effect of flexing, the cutting bit was run along the thread several times without adavancing it into the work, until no material was taken off anymore.
 

The finished spindle thread
 
To be continued ...

Some travel got into the way of progressing this project and on reporting on it ….
 
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In order to mount the y-axis to the column, an adapter is needed. This adapter is fashioned from a small aluminium-block that was bored for the 20 mm column. The top-side was milled to a close fit on the lower slide from the WW-lathe, which is clamped down with a bolt. In this way the lower slide can be moved by about 15 mm, giving a greater depth of throat, if needed. It was planned to use a rectangular key to lock the adapter to the column. However, it appears that the two set-screws lock it sufficiently secure to the column. Practical experience will show whether this is true.
 

Drilling the adapter for the y-axis
 
The 20 mm-hole was drilled and bored on a face-plate in the lathe to ensure that it is exactly vertical to the top and bottom of the adapter block. The aluminium-block was srewed down onto the face-plate using a 6 mm hexagonal bolt. Luckily, a suitable hole was needed anyway for the locking bolt of the slide. Other hexagonal bolts prevent the block from moving during the machining operations and act as counter-weights.
 

Boring the adapter for the y-axis
 
After the functional machining was complete, the adapter was 'beautified' by giving the edges a half-round camfer. For occasional jobs on aluminium like this, I use cheap woodworking router bits ... don't tell any real mechanic.
 

Camfering the adapter for the y-axis
 

Finished adapter block
The Lorch, Schmidt & Co. milling attachment will be held between two angle-irons screwed-down onto the slide. The locking will be effected by an excentric bolt acting as a cam. I had hoped to use the threaded holes that a previous owner of the slide had made, but they did not fit the angle-iron I had in my stock, so new holes had to be drilled and tapped. The pair of angle-irons was squared and trued on the mill using a fly-cutter.
 

Squaring and trueing angle-irons in pairs
 

Angle-irons to hold milling-head
 

Angle-irons to hold milling-head
 
The above picture shows also the drive unit made for the toolpost-grinder of the WW-lathe, which in fact looks very similar to what the future motorised milling head will look like.
 

Provisional set-up of motorised milling head
 
 
To be continued ...

I'd like one of these, a fully functional miniature Bridgeport!
 

Hi, Bob! It's my dream, but real... It's lathe TV-16, 1964 year, made in Soviet Union.

Actually, I wanted to continue with my SMS WESPE model, but run into some technical difficulties and then this project came my way ...
 
The complex manual machining of very small parts on a milling machine requires smooth and precise movements of the slides as well as small masses to be moved. The slides of a watchmakers lathe fulfill these requirements. In addition, work-pieces and tools should be visible very well during machining.
 
Milling machines such as the Aciere F1 (or the older F12) or Sixis 101 are ideal for working on small parts, but are still far too large for my workshop (and have a too big price tag ...). Interesting from a design point of view would be also jig-borer and milling-machines by SIP (Société Genevoise d'Instruments de Physique), but they are very rare and difficult to come by. All these machines are massive and heavily constructed in order minimise vibrations by their inertia during the machining of precision parts for watches and instruments – too massive for my small workshop.
 

Aciera F1 milling machine (Source: http://www.lathes.co.uk/aciera/)
 

Sixis 101 milling machine (Source: http://www.lathes.co.uk/sixis/)
 

SIP jig-borer and milling machine  (Quelle: http://www.lathes.co.uk/sip/)
 
A special feature of these machines is that the x-slide is not arranged horizontally under the milling spindle, but vertically in front of the main column. This permits the easy installation of a fourth and fifth machining axis.  However, this arrangement means that the movement in the y-axis is not effected by the cross-slide, but by the milling head. This in turn means that milling head and motor should ideally form a unit. A belt-drive is more difficult to arrange, because the angle between the pulleys changes, when the milling head moves along. The SIP jig-borer for these reason originally was driven through a flexible shaft.
A watchmakers lathe is a good starting point owing to the precision of the slides and spindles, but it lacks the z-axis. In more recent years kits became available to convert Chinese-made watchmakers lathes into small vertical milling machines, but the milling table on them is arranged in a conventional way.
 

Conversion of a modern Chinese watchmakers lathe into a vertical milling machine
 
In my stock of watchmakers lathe bits and pieces I have collected over the years parts for several D-bed lathes of variable state of conservation. Some ‘scrap’ was also bought on purpose. From this parts I now want to construct a micro-milling machine with as little work as possible.
As design specifications I decided that the mill should be able to machine in a space of u 20 mm x 20 mm x 20 mm. This requires movements along the x-, y-, and z-axes of around 40 mm. There should be a fourth axis with a 360° rotation, that should be able to rotated under load. This axis should also be able to be moved from the vertical into the horizontal (5th axis). All those movements should be realised with parts from watchmakers lathes, so that no dove-tail slides need to be machined from scratch.
The back-bone of the mill will be a special D-bed that I obtained recently. It was originally meant for the conversion of a lathe into a small precision pillar-drill. Its lower end is turned down to a diameter that fits into a lathe foot. The foot that I am going to use probably came from a British Pultra-lathe (http://www.lathes.co.uk/pultra/page8.html).
 

Column and foot
 
Another key part is an old and somewhat battered cross-slide from a Lorch, Schmidt & Co. D-bed lathe. This will be the x- and z-axis of the new milling machine.
 
Cross-slide from a D-bed watchmakers lathe
 
The y-axis will be constructed with the help of a nearly scrap lower-slide from the cross-slide of a Lorch, Schmidt & Co. WW-lathe that I was able to buy cheaply. The spindle and micrometer-dial will have to be made from scratch. A 6 mm-grinding spindle of unknown make will serve as milling spindle. This limits somewhat the maximum diameter of cutters that can be used to ones with about a 4 mm-shaft, but the machine is meant for light work after all. On the other hand, many years ago I made an adapter for 6 mm end-mill for use in the lathe together with a vertical slide (before I owned a milling machine).
 

Lower slide from a WW-lathe cross-slide and grinding spindle
 

Future arrangement for the y-axis of the micro-mill
 
The fourth and fifth axis will be formed by the dividing head that I made some years ago from a 6 mm-watchmakers lathe grinding-spindle. For the moment it will be simply screwed onto the cross-slide as for use with a lathe. This gives considerable flexibility for the positioning at any angle between vertical and horizontal. The setting will be a bit time-consuming and has to be done with templates.
 

Column, cross-slide and dividing head assembled
 

Column, cross-slide and dividing head assembled
 
So far the existing parts that need to be re-conditioned somewhat at a later point in time.
 
To be continued ...

Nice to see you back in the Triton shipyard

Back at it?
Well, my poor Triton has been sitting idle for almost a year and collecting sawdust from my other addictive hobby - pen-turning. (A dark abyss, but rewarding for the fast results). A victim of this new passtime and the bathroom renovation from hell at my cottage, the deck clamps that I started laying out last January have not been touched in months. I did get a new Proxxon saw blade which I hope will fix my frustrations ripping planks.
 
So, here is the status on the deck clamps:
 
Using The Anatomy of a Ship: HMS Diana I planned out the anchor stock design and realized that, because of the angled cuts, it would be easy to make these run crooked. The lines on this paper are exactly the width I need for the clamps so I am able to lay out the planks nice and parallel, keeping them in place with pins as I go.

Thanks, Jan!
As to your question...this model is 10.5 cm across the beam, 8.5 cm from keel to the top of the rail and just over 6 cm fore and aft.
(That's 4.5" x 3.25" x 2.5" for the metric-challenged!)
 
This is one concentrated headache generator!
 
LOL,
Gabe

March 2014
 
My main motivation for starting this project was to learn the craft of scratch-building - and the online format with so many build logs and supportive modellers makes this an ideal educational environment. I also wanted to develop my skills on some of the power tools I now own, some of them thanks to my friend Clarence who was an avid woodworker but downscaled his workshop when he and his wife decided to sell their home and move into a senior's condo. His scroll saw has basically been collecting dust in my home except for the one scary time I used it to cut the rail cap on my first build, the Swift. I had no clue how to properly work it, so this project was going to be my scroll saw course.
 
As I looked over the plans for the Triton it started to dawn on me what a challenge1/96 might be. The size of the parts for the frames would make things 'interesting' in the Chinese curse way. The futtocks would have to be cut from 3/32 stock. This was my first scratch build so I still wanted to try assembling frames, but making 9 of them at this scale was beginning to worry me. So, I came up with a compromise that I could live with...but I'm not sure what you folks might think. I plan on building the outermost frame pairs (4 and D) accordingly, but the inner frames I'm going to cut as single pieces. This way I get some experience building up frames, the model will look more authentic (outwardly at least) and I won't go nuts.
 
After some research and a look through my supply of wood, I decided to go with birch for the inner, one-piece frame pairs. To get my 1" stock down to 3/16" it needed to be resawn and then planed...and I didn't have the equipment to get this done. However, we have a wood shop in the school where I teach and the woods teacher was happy to help me out. So, after classes on a Friday afternoon he coached and helped me make the stock I needed. (Thanks, Michael!). Later that evening I printed out the frame plans and glued them to the birch with spray adhesive.
 

 
The next day I used the band saw to roughly cut apart the frames. I grabbed #4 and took it to the scroll saw for the moment of truth. I set up a fine-toothed blade, dialed in a fast speed and nervously pushed the wood into the teeth. Well, I suppose it was an ok job...but it took a bit more reading, a great YouTube video and a few more frames before I could really say I had the hang of cutting a controlled line!
 
 
My goal was to use the scroll saw to get to about a millimetre of the line on the plan and then take the frame to my little belt sander to get the wood to the line. But, the frames at this scale were just so thin that I became very nervous about snapping them while getting them to size. So, I decided to cut and sand to the inside line before even cutting the outside to give at least some support to the wood as I worked on it. I chose to do the inside first because it was harder to work with at the sander.
 
 
The belt sander was terrifying to use...it could remove material so fast that it took a very light touch and a lot of concentration not to grind a frame down too far. There were many heart-stopping moments, and one mistake that will need a bit of a fix. To smooth out the lines left by the sander I made a couple of sanding blocks that fit the inner and outer curves of the frames using a product called Sand-to-Shape. I had picked these up at the sale table at our Lee Valley.
 
 
Eventually I had the hang of things and I was able to complete a frame in about 30 minutes.
 
I soon realized that my one-piece frame pairs had a weakness. The upper futtocks ran with the grain of the wood, but the grain went across the first and floor futtocks. So, in addition to being very thin I had to be careful not to stress the lower parts of the frames too much. Sure enough, while cutting frame 3 on the scroll saw the blade caught the wood and it snapped. The worst part was that it happened while cutting the outside line...AFTER I had already spent the time and energy to cut and sand the inside of the frame. Ah well.
 

Thanks SJSoane,
 
I often think I spend more time thinking of ways to make modelling easier than I do actually modelling!!

I was wondering if they could be an early form of bilge keel?
David B

Those strakes don't make any sense to me... They seem like they would accomplish little but serve as a place for barnacles to thrive.  Wish I knew the logic behind them.
 
Matt

Allan
 
Its a weird thing but it is always shown on models of the Mary Rose. Here is a bassett- lowke model of the Mary Rose and you can see the same batten type strakes along the bottom of the hull.   Its very weird.
 

I agree with Brian C - The Model Machines Drawplate  is brilliant - one of my favourite non powered toys!! I have used bamboo BBQ skewers to treenail/Trennel/trunnel on my last two builds. I think tree nailing and another dimension to the hobby and, if done well, looks great. I found that the bamboo skewers went through the drawplate well, but had to be sliced longitudinally several times in order to fit into the larger holes. This meant slicing with a hobby knife. I found this to be a pain for two reasons. Firstly getting the hobby knife to slice evenly along the length of the skewer was sometimes difficult. Secondly I tended to cut, stab and splinter myself  with the knife &  bamboo slivers - klutz!!
 
I ended up making a simple jig to halve, quarter and then further divide the skewer if necessary - without blood and swearing!!!(see pics below)
 

 
The Byrnes Drawplate - an engineering masterpiece!!!
 

 
- take 2 identical pieces of pine which are slightly bigger than a razor blade and drill 2 holes through them (clamp together for drilling so holes line up perfectly in both)
 
- insert  bolts which will be fitted with wing nuts for quick adjustment
 
- Fit both pieces of wood together and tighten wing nuts
 
- Drill a hole (about the same size as a bbq skewer) down the centre of the 2 pieces of wood - make sure that half the hole you drill is in each piece of wood. - a bench mounted drill will achieve much more accurate results than a hand held one.
 
- Do the same with a smaller drill bit - for use once you have quartered your skewer.
 

 
- fit your razorblade over the bolts
 

 
- slide the top half of the jig over the bolts and tighten with the wing nuts
 

 
- the jig can be adjusted by tightening or loosening the wing nuts - this will accommodate any slight variation in skewer diameter.
 
- Push then pull the skewer over the razor to produce an even slice.
 
                                 Happy tree nailing!!

Has anyone used Orange wood to draw and make nails? From somewhere in the past I have acquired a box of 2500 Orange Wood cuticle sticks. Bound to be useful for something other than glue sticks.

Has anyone used Orange wood to draw and make nails? From somewhere in the past I have acquired a box of 2500 Orange Wood cuticle sticks. Bound to be useful for something other than glue sticks.

I currently purchase billet wood from them and I am pleased with the material I received.

These tongs really only make sense, when you have a draw-bench. A draw-bench is used for drawing wires, not wood/bamboo. The draw-plate is fixed at one end and at the other there is a chain with a geared winding mechanism, or a belt. The hooked arm of the tongs points upward, while the straight one slides on the bench - in this way the pressure on the wire increases the stronger you pull. Here a historical example from the Internet:

Source: http://phiden.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/draw-bench.jpg
 
I don't think these tongs would be useful to draw material for tree-nails ...