4th Annual BLF/OL Scratch Made Light Contest- Hand Made 10/31 finished

Which thread pitch does your tool have? Also copper is a very nasty material. You need sharp tools and lots of lubrication. It certainly helps if you drown everything in rapeseed oil, at least that’s what I noticed when I worked with it on the lathe.

Looking good RBD :beer:

I’ve got a lot of catch-up to do - everyone seems to have got off to a flying start.

An amazing amount of great work is being done here, thanks for posting every detail.
Watching… :slight_smile:

Hi Fritz, it’s a 20 x 1 mm tap. I used it for the first time last year to make to make a copper added 502b. Had more success then. I’m not worried, or surprised really, just have to try again with another idea to make it better.

Steve, I’ll have to check whether it stretched or not when I cut the brass nut free.

Warning! Random post, deletable to get first post of page 3 if needed. Hopefully cuts down on scrolling to new stuff and speed page loading by spreading image heavy posts over several pages.

Impressive stuff there RBD. Kind of turned the drill press into a mini vertical lathe with that hacksaw blade.

Exactly, my dad has an old “kit” lathe/drill press I used to make the cherry handle for last years prize build but that would have been cheating. Somehow the hack saw fits the notion of hack build much better. I remember some discussions of whether it was the tool or how used that determined qualification but it says drill press ok so I’m drill pressing. There’s still more than enough pure hand and eye in this and coaxing any kind of accuracy out of this concatenation isn’t a high probability but it does let me do things I simply couldn’t hang on to do freehand. Just how close I can get to what I want remains to be seen as there are plenty of places to skew the pooch still.

So that’s how it’s done. Nice work & ideas :+1:

Good call, you were absolute correct, it stretched by ~.3 mm, too much to assemble after tapping. This might change the order of fabrication(as if I had a clue in the first place). The fins and spacers should support it enough to prevent this but I’ll need to ponder the consequences. Rats, this mouse’s plans have gone awry. Either I reduce the OD after the fact(safest) or assemble it and then tap it(risky because of the torque needed) I think I’ll go with plan A since the spacer ring material is a bit loose to begin with. And this will allow me to improve that fit as a side benefit. I’ll need to basically do what I did before but better and deal with the consequences.

I wonder if you annealed the material then rolled it, the outer diameter may shrink back to its former size?

The inner piece was annealed when it was fitted and both again during the brazing process. It’s all good now, I made another and the shims made the tap start true and once going it stayed true. Gonna put the update here as it will be easier to move to page 3 when there is one. Here is the next brazed together and soldered into a piece of coupling that in turn is brazed to the nut. The shims take up the extra space around the tap before it engages to get it on axis. It came out much better this time. It did swell a few tenths of a mm so after cutting it free I sanded and filed it back down until it fit my spacer material. Here it is with a piece of last years leftover pill material. And here’s a view showing the shim material(say “Pepsi please”). It will need a lip to be brazed on like the failed one had. I also got started making some new pill material. !
{width:100%} http://i1166.photobucket.com/albums/q619/Rufusbduck/72C86505-7A9F-4F46-8D78-0976E5D77F7D_zpssmtprsiw.jpg! The larger piece gets collapsed around the smaller and the “cap” sits inside the thickness of a sinkpad below the rim. It took two tries to get it right. The first one just wouldn’t close up and though I could have sanded it down to the right size it was less work to do it over. It needs the cap piece to be installed and then similarly soldered to a bolt so I can wrestle the 20x1mm die down the length.
Brass and wood

I’m not sure if you realise this RBD but this build is identical to your others in one respect. I have no idea what your doing. :blush:

That makes it unanimous.

Edit, it’s only fair since I don’t know what anyone else is doing either. If it doesn’t become clear by the end then it probably won’t work.

I agree, I have no idea what you are doing or where this is going but the pictures look amazing! I am looking forwards to more :slight_smile:

That’s me, designing with ADD.

Your designing with ADD makes something BADD. :person_facepalming:

Why thank you, I think :zipper_mouth_face: I’ve shown it so far with a P60 reflector but I’m waiting on a different one that’s 1mm wider and 7-8 mm deeper so it would affect the design of the head(mainly the length) which is why I cut fins but went no further with that. Bouncing around may be fun and keep you all confused but it’s not really a goal, just a byproduct of my own disorganized mind and doing what I can when I can. There’s a lot still to come that’s going to be just as confusing. Spoiler tidbits deleted.

Made some good progress today. I started by grinding the corners off of the bezel and then mounting it on a 7/8” hole saw using the rest of the compression fitting core I cut the threads from earlier. After a couple light passes. Almost there. The last passes then a bit of sanding, I added a few wraps of Teflon tape on the threads to remove slop. As you can see I need to cut the wood collar down to match. So it goes back on the 1” hole saw with tape. The brass came in ~.03 mm under 30 mm and its ~31.8 mm now. I cut to about 30.2 mm with the hack saw blade and sanded the rest using 320, 400, 600, 1500, and finally 2500 grit. It’s still a bit bigger than the brass by less than .1 mm but I want to get it re impregnated with epoxy and see where it cures to. It such a small piece that it’s hard to make that little a batch of epoxy resin(I’m measuring quarter capfuls already so you guessed it, I’m cutting the tube too. After seeing how Steve’s lathe performed on his pieces I’m a bit embarrassed but here it is. The goal when drilling it was to b equidistant from 3 sides and cutting a but more from the fourth to get to clean wood under a bad bit. The first pic showed the heavy cut on the one side and from this one you can see the matching flats indicating the other three sides should come round at the greatest diameter possible. From here on it just keep tapping the hack saw block(can’t see it move but the sound tells me I’m cutting) then adjusting the table up and down to cover the entire length. I kinda got lost in the rhythm when it came time to sand and didn’t take any pictures, just started with 220 and proceeded on up to 2500. The difference this time is I raised the grain with a damp cloth from 400 on. Also, after raising the grain I switch to the next grit and hand sanded the long way slowly turning the chuck with the other hand before spinning it and then raising the grain again. There was the dark vestige of one flat side remaining so when it was still there at 2500 I started over at 320 and did I it again. Here are both pieces fully sanded. And with some epoxy sealer thinned with alcohol. The dark blemish at the left end is where I hope place the switch hole. That’s all for now.

You can see the same blemish in this pic and how much more usable length was gained at the other end by slightly offsetting the bore.
Brass battery tube

I just love the hacksaw blade attached to the drill press - priceless! :slight_smile: :beer:

I kind of wish I was making something round this year, so I could try it out. …yes, I have an idea of what I’m going to attempt to build…. took me some time - hope it’s not indicative of how long it will take to build it!

That’s some beautiful wood! Good job on the ‘machine’ work there.