I got to this point with my grip machining and figured I should get some of your wonderful opinions (and have a beer).
Should I stop with the vertical grooves at this point and clean up the horizontal ones with a file to get rid of the marks? Or do I keep going until the vertical cuts are deeper than the horizontal ones and uniform?
Thanks
Spent a little more time downstairs with the lathe this morning (decided to keep going with the beers yesterday) and this is what I ended up with. I’m happy, what do you guys think?
Your grooving tool has an angle on it; you might want to grind it flat. I’m not sure what kind of tool you used for the horizontal grooves, looks like a keyseat cutter probably, but you might have a lot of deflection going on, or the grooves just aren’t deep enough to clean up the features from the angled radial grooves.
I’d say your best bet for minimal effort would be to grind the grooving tool flat and cut the radial grooves a bit deeper.
I have a ton of deflection going on… My little bench top setup isn’t very rigid. It’s a what I can do with what’s in the basement kind of deal. I didn’t spend much time on setup, just kindof eyeballed it on center. I’m leaning towards just cleaning up the radial grooves and calling it good.
If you’ve got some kind of 3-in-1 machine, make sure you lock the quill during the mill work, lock and tighten the gibs during the cut, and keep everything as short as possible. Spring passes are a good move as well.
Just my little old schaublin 102 plain lathe with a grooving tool turned 90 degrees and fed in manually with the compound slide. I said I would never do this again… Full of crap I am. So much turning of that stupid little knob…
Were it me, I think I’d cut all the bottoms smooth & even; and if I felt really froggy, I’d cut thin radial lines centered on the high flats between the radial grooves. No suggestions as to “how”, but I think I’d find a way to relieve the snaggy corners of all the groove intersections…
Whichever way you choose to go from here, the project looks very interesting so far! I can hardly wait for the Beauty Shots at the end!
Smart move with the 90° grooving tool, using the lathe as a planer. I saw that huge curly chip in the photo in the OP but didn’t put two and two together. If you’ve got any of the #10 exacto blades, it can be used to deburr the tiny burrs left from the cutting operations. I use these constantly.
