Lathe Rebuild - Cross Slide | Part 1 (I almost scrapped a $250 piece of steel)

[@Forge366]

I swear he's not buying a bandsaw just to mess with us

[@EnlightenedSavage]

Yep, and i encourage it.

[@SvenIronhand]

I agree😂😂

[@BraxtonHoward]

I was expecting the hack saw to make an appearance.

[@joseph3164]

My first thought

[@MarcusLindblomSonestedt78]

At this point, nothing else makes sense...

[@Rusty-Metal]

Thank you so much for telling us it was a 7 hour job just squaring. Us hobby machinists get overwhelmed thinking we should be able to do this in 20 min and there is something wrong with us or machining will never be for us since all we see is super fast and perfectly executed operations since most videos and people are not showing us everything.

[@LoneWolfPrecisionLLC]

As an owner of a machine shop those 20 minute guys are full of crap. Everything takes 3.1415 times as long as you think. Double that if you have to make it work with less than ideal tools

[@FinboySlick]

But that was at least 6 hours of banging on those chisels ;)

[@Rusty-Metal]

@@LoneWolfPrecisionLLC thank you too!

[@ryebis]

Cast iron, especially gray cast iron has excellent damping properties that helps eliminate any resonant chatter. Steel might be fine for what you do though I wouldn't be surprised if the whole setup rings like a bell at certain feed / speed and load combination.

[@PhaseConverterampV]

Damping, to dampen is to make wet. To reduce vibration you damp it .

[@ExarchGaming]

@@PhaseConverterampV 2. 'make less strong or intense.' "nothing could dampen her enthusiasm"

[@pcka12]

​@@PhaseConverterampVsimilar issues with saying 'bushings' when they mean 'bushes' & on a nautical theme the mangling of the word bouy (properly pronounced 'boy').

[@joshuaklingensmith7843]

Oh the English language

[@ryebis]

I fat fingered it. One typo and the internet throws the Oxford dictionary at you 🤣 Mr. Artisan does thank you for the engagement though.

[@fldrmaus]

I laughed out loud when that chisel snapped 😂 at least you didn't use the hacksaw this time

[@MCsCreations]

I guess he's going to need to order some more...

[@camhutch8149]

I was waiting for the hacksaw 😂

[@MatthewHolevinski]

Sometimes I feel like society was built upon the back of milk crates.

[@aceroadholder2185]

As others have said, cold rolled steel has a boatload of stress in it from the rolling process. Not too noticeable in hand sized work but in larger work it will wiggle like a snake when you start cutting large chunks out of it. Take it to a heat treat shop and have it stress relieved. It will save a lot of headache when you are trying to do the final fit up.

[@davidbillington9654]

Good work so far. Your problem with cold rolled steel warping is why I always normalise it before machining so any stresses have been removed. I use a ceramic kiln for that, it's never been used for ceramics by me, occasionally glass, but mainly heat treating metal. I wrap it in stainless steel tool foil which keeps it from oxidising and scaling.

[@dazaspc]

Unless you are sourcing a size or profile that is particular to the finished part it is usally easier to just cube it. The only exclusion I would say is hex stock and then you dont heat it at all. Hex almost always used for making nuts.

[@Pluap]

You do reduce stress but you can also lose strength when you normalize steel

[@dazaspc]

@@Pluap Indeed but it isnt a forging

[@vx-iidu]

5:22 I legit expected him to pull out the hacksaw

[@sparkiekosten5902]

Wasted opportunity right there to mess with us!

[@great__success]

then split screen "3 months later"

[@bill3641]

Your mill just performed it's life's work in one project............ . It owes you nothing.

[@bmalovic]

When you cut dovetails, cut the channel a bit deeper (just 0.1-0.2mm will be enough), then flat surface of the dovetails. Also when you cut T slots, cut channel bit deeper then the bottom of T will be. For ex if you cut channel 10.2mm deep, set the bottom of the dovetail/T cutter at 10mm. This will relief some stress from the dovetail or T cutter, and this surfaces do not bare anything, its just clearance. Also when using fly cutter, reverse directions as seen at 13:09 for example. Cut the side near you by moving the table to the right, and side near mill column by moving the table to the left. This way you will get almost no burr at the edges. Same apply for the regular end mill or shell cutter. BTW nice project.

[@ianloy1854]

Love it. Using an angle grinder cutoff wheel I would strongly suggest getting a diamond wheel for it - Bunnings have them as does Aliexpress. The cut is wider which isn't great - but it isn't wanting to explode and do damage to you. When setting up the block having the 123 blocks to give maximum support at the ends is probably best, and then tapping it down at each end, like you do when you flipped it over. Your comments on bright steel are spot on - when having to machine all sides to dimension hot rolled (black) steel. When using end mills if possible cut at full depth. This helps reduce the number of cuts that the end of the mill is used which is where it will dull fastest. Of course depends on the machines capabilities as you would still want to feed at about the same rate.

[@thefimo4505]

Its content

[@argee55]

Looks like you’re off to a good start. Looking forward to part 2.

[@MattysWorkshop]

Gday, the price of material here now is unbelievable,certainly going to be a massive project but well worth it mate, cheers

[@camillosteuss]

Pity, i can get such pieces in toolsteel on scrapyards for like 50 cents a kilo... I just recently snagged like 200kg of toolsteel slabs from a die and mould making shop that was scrapping steel at my favorite scrapyard... They dumped a few tonnes of crap that had some 200kg of good stock among the crap... 100$ for all of it... I know that down-under does not offer good scrapyard steel and stock, but alas, i`m in europe, and here the scrapyards are a stock mine - often offering marked alloys and good shit that doesn`t count as mystery steel...

[@orangetruckman]

Once I heard him say the price, I almost choked!

[@camillosteuss]

@@orangetruckman Fuckin` scam, i`m tellin` ya... 300 bucks for mild steel? Like, bitch - get outta my sight with that shit...

[@Horus9339]

So good to see you working again. I hope you are healing well Sir. Thank you for posting more videos.

[@olympia007]

I've been putting off making one of these. I use an old circular saw with a used drop saw disk to cut stock. does not have the rpm of a grinder but the cut is straight.

[@rolfbjorn9937]

A ferrous metal carbide blade on that circular saw will do wonders.

[@seabreezecoffeeroasters7994]

Time to take some of those sweet sweet Vevor Schilling bucks for a Portable bandsaw (and base)🤣I got the Baumr version a few years ago and they are great.

[@CatNolara]

Now that's going above and beyond... Funnily I'm in the process of improving the cross slide of my small lathe as well, although not as extensive. I made a solid tool post, scraped the bottom faces of the dovetail and the mating faces on the carriage and now I'm making a new spindle with bigger pitch and axial bearings. The solid toolpost is already a good thing to have since I rarely use the compound and it's already mounted to my homemade milling attachment as Y axis. I made the solid toolpost exactly as high as the compound and the tool holder mount is offset from the pivot in the cross slide since I can adjust the reach of my tool that way. And that way it's easier to access the clamping bolts.

[@Andreas-Bauer21]

Buy, or better yet, build a bandsaw. Michel Uphoff has built one that is not only well-built and damn sexy, but also very accurate and works great. And, importantly, that nifty machine is small, so it won’t be a problem in a small shop. If I'm not mistaken, he will publish all the drawings for free very soon.

[@craigspicer4296]

Great work and love your approach which helps me. Mill is finally coming next week end and i am super happy to start milling and making things on a mill.

[@fearlyenrage]

Hi, intention to inform; just get a carbid tipped dovetail cutter. Changes the game. The job gets fun when you drive the autofeed really slow and with some kind of cleaning action, so there is no ghostcutting. Ghostcutting the chips, ruins the HSS flutes easy. When the machine can work the job slow and with some sharp tools it is fun to do. Nice piece so far.

[@vosloob]

I'm really not sure you should put chips in your regular recycling bin. I think they ask you not to put lids of stuff like milk bottles in as they clog up the equipment. Anyway love the chanell, you go a good way to filling the void TOT has left in my heart.

[@MF175mp]

There's a reason why the original cross slide is a little bit short. In the long slide, the far end of the slide isn't gonna wear as much because it's so rarely in contact with the base. And because of that, once the most used part starts wearing down you will not be able to tighten it because the unworn part in the far end is going to jam up.

[@artisanmakes]

If that’s the case it never needed to be much of an issue on the old Colchester I used to run. I don’t know how old it was but I know the cross slide had a ton of overhang on the back.

[@Lone-Wolf87]

That looks very nice. So far well done. Very impressive what you can do in that small shop. 👍👍👍👍

[@brianlundblad7292]

Great Job enjoyed watching. A suggestion is you can make an arbor and use cutting disks in your mill to reduce stock with my feeder it makes short work of it.

[@TalRohan]

I bought a 9inch grinder because I can't cut big bits of steel square in two passes, it goes through a frightening amount of discs but the full depth of cut is definitely better than two 4inch disc cuts. Looks good so far.

[@o0xenon0o]

I big reason for using cast iron is it's vibration dampening and stiffness properties.

[@UncleKennysPlace]

Steel is actually stiffer (and most steel alloys are remarkably similar in stiffness). But steel that can free-machine and damp vibration doesn't exist.

[@kosir1234]

@@UncleKennysPlace stiffer yes, but we are talking vibration dampening.

[@1ookke]

Good stuff. You can probably use a compact KA-500 scale for the cross-slide, they just cost a bit more than the commonly used KA-300 scales.

[@howardosborne8647]

I was going to suggest something similar. The sino brand scales on my mill are approximately 22mm square which is far more compact than the scale he is using here.

[@michaelc.b.ashley16]

@@howardosborne8647 Yes, and put it on the other side of the cross-slide so it doesn't affect the tailstock at all. And get one with 1 micron resolution.

[@artisanmakes]

That is the back up plan

[@EngineerRaisedInKingston]

What a massive project! Kudos to you for taking this on, that's very impressive! On a side note - how come you didn't use the massive fly cutter you made some time ago to clean up the faces? Surely that would've been the perfect tool for this? Can't wait to see how you progress this build!

[@jucaesar4961]

I could imagine it to be just under the full width of the part in this video. In such a case, I probably would have also opted for two similar size finishes than two awkwardly spaced ones.

[@melgross]

I have to admire your perseverance. If I couldn’t cut a piece that size, I would have paid a machine shop to do it. A lot of machines use odd angle dovetails. I’m not sure why either. I suppose there are good reasons. There’s nothing special about 45 or 60 degree dovetails. They’re just common angles.

[@blackoak4978]

A complication just means more content

[@Moehre040]

i mean he said 45 or 60 are the common ones and the 55 his machine had was the odd one.

[@melgross]

@ well, not really 45, except for ways sometimes, but 60. Actually odd angles like 55, 57 are more common for dovetails.

[@howardosborne8647]

@@melgross Yes,the 55 degree dovetails are quite common on the dovetail slides of many older lathes etc.....my Harrison L6 has 55 degree dovetails on the cross slide.

[@chrisleech1565]

Wow that is one large piece of stock!! Nice work. I'd bet dollars to donuts that my welding skills would make yours passable. There is one given. I go blind once the arc commences. Another factor is the old Miller 210 probably needs a refresh. At the very least a new stinger. I'd be better at stick if I could get a bit more practice. But I would just as soon concentrate on creating precision parts on my heavily modified CNC router. Fusion 360 CAM is my jam these days. P.s. one thing for sure, cutting up aluminum for a project is so much easier.

[@TheMadManPlace]

Add an air-blast to the mill to get rid of the swarf. Small orifice so that you don't murder your compressor. Some also have coolant misting capabilities.

[@artisanmakes]

Not with the compressor I currently own

[@LaLaLand.Germany]

Good job, Buddy! Who needs a bandsaw anyways… I find Your vids have a certain uplift, like if I had a mill and a lathe I too could do such projects. For my birthday a good friend gave me a "welding class", when he visited I said "Hey, let´s make blue light!" So we did, I made my 1st t-weld with a stick and it was awsome! I got myself the cheapest stick welder I could find and it turned out to be a very nifty box. Cheap as can be but it welds nice. Just try it. Buy a stick weld, get a helmet, a pack of 2mm electrodes, some scraps and try! I am very glad I did, it´s so much fun and my 1st weld was a lucky one, pretty as can be, top shelf good connection. My thing was the strike. Them buggers jumpscared me but now I´m over it. If You can do this You can stick weld. And please be safe, wear ppe.

[@ImolaS3]

What an interesting project! My lathe is the same size as yours, so I watch with interest. 2 points, a) you really need a bandsa :). b) your mill is out of tram. The right side of the fly cutter is cutting quite deeply after the left when moving right to left

[@artisanmakes]

Yeah I haven't gotten around to retrimming it. Its been getting worse as of late

[@AbdulazizAl-Khater]

Amazing work as usual. Looking forward to the rest of this neat project!

[@kieranh2005]

I have a similar problem with the cross slide scale for my lathe DRO. You can get a slimline scale which is 16x16 and would let your tailstock come in a lot closer.

[@willbrooks5968]

13:24 I believe that took 7 hours. A couple months ago I finished making an arbor support for my Hardinge horizontal mill. It took me a months worth of evening and weekends (not all of them, but most of them) to finish it. I used a big slab of hot rolled plate that I got from a local scrap yard, but just squaring it up easily took me 10 hours.

[@BrainHurricanes]

5:25 No hacksaw ? Now I'm dissapointed 😉

[@jacehardin7828]

Alright everyone we are going to start a gofundme to get this man a band saw, or something to help him cut metal more efficiently

[@sidewind131258]

Horisontal or vertical saw ? I'm in

[@jasoncox7244]

@@sidewind131258 Mad deserves a DoAll with power feed. he's done his time lol

[@melgross]

Start it and I’ll contribute.

[@MathMikeAllen]

Set it up. I'm in.

[@steelcappedstrength]

Count me in too

[@gerryoneill8881]

A big project there for sure, good luck.

[@rolfbjorn9937]

A circular saw with a steel cutting carbide blade would allow you to cut clean sides and even probably rough out some angled cuts before final machining. In multiple passes obviously with a 50mm CRS Bar I'm also experimenting with a palm router for smaller corrections and the table saw with a crosscut sled to cut grooves or make small accurate cuts. So far I've successfully corrected slots on a steel portable machine base with the router and a carbide upspiral bit and flush cut roundover. I've only used the table saw sled with 6063-T5 and 5052-H32 .125" to .250" Plates with great result in terms of accuracy and finish. OBVIOUSLY PARTS ARE TO BE CLAMPED or BOLTED, PPE and Functional BRAIN required.

[@TheRecreationalMachinist]

Impressive 👍

[@someone6170]

Thanks for saying how many hours it took to dimension the steel. Makes me feel better about how long I take. The edit does make it look like it is done in about 10mins.

[@johnsjunkyard]

Cast Iron has a few benefits to steel, vibration and resonance reduction, doesn't raise a burr when knocked so generally doesn't affect calibration as much when damaged by chips and dings etc but mostly it's because of it's dimensional accuracy over working temperatures, it just expands less so things like heat affected tool position changes and relative offsets are likely to change much less. ie, it's a more forgiving and stable material in this particular application.

[@artisanmakes]

I can not believe I forgot about the vibration damping. That’s a bit embarrassing. Cheers

[@1crazypj]

Even with an angle grinder that looked like a lot of work to cut block down. Takes a bit of force to snap even small cold chisel. Coolant is probably due for change? (it's going nasty yellow) Always a pleasure to watch your latest adventure.

[@thisolesignguy2733]

Cast iron is used not for the cost, but more for the properties. It's the heat expansion in particular. cast iron expands and contracts at a set amount reliably, and is completely repeatable. It also resists warping because cast iron tends to not warp under heat, instead it dissipates the heat throughout the part. That's also 1 of the reasons you don't need coolant when machining, along with the carbon being a natural lubricant. So, alot of companies will use cast iron even if steel is cheaper or the same price because with the repeatability there won't be recalls or future cracking & warping. It's also why cast iron engine blocks are so reliable.

[@artisanmakes]

Yes a good piece of cast iron is, and that’ll be an another reason why it is used, in top of the reasons I listed. My best source for this is Wayne R. Moore book Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy. But all of this is contingent on proper cooling during the casting.

[@mazchen]

Ahhh. Now the scraper story makes a lot of sense 😊

[@loganlawlyes1980]

I was looking to make a cross slide for my lathe, and this video helps a lot, thank you

[@SuperJaXXas]

Looks great, going to be a sweet upgrade!

[@Lucas_sGarage]

One thing you can do with the chips of aluminum and brass is melt them down into new stock once they pile up, with the steel ones just pick up a large container like a garbage bin and fill it, then once you need to go somewhere close to the scrapyard you bring it with you

[@ashesman1]

Think about adding an air mist coolant setup to you mill. Noisy, but get the chip clearing of proper flood but not the mess.

[@campbellmorrison8540]

Wow that is a big job for smallish gear, im impressed, my mill and lathe is similar and I wouldn't have thought I could do this, I haven't got a bandsaw either :(

[@Festivejelly]

Bloody hell steel is expensive where you live! Im planning on doing this on my smaller lathe, but cast iron instead. I think its called Meehanite or something. Ive got a small WM180 lathe but want T slots. Since I dont use a compound I figured id just make it higher for my solid tool post.

[@howardosborne8647]

Yes, Meehanite is the best grade of cast iron for what you plan on doing

[@jackfromthe60s]

The cost doesn’t bother me too much. It’s the difficulty finding a retailer who will sell small pieces to the hobbyists.

[@mgnbukint6502]

55 dgerees is a pretty common angle for machine tool dovetails & is the angle used on Harrison and Colchester lathe cross slides on machines built in the UK. I understand the reason is that the 55 degree angle is less prone to "wedging" than 60 and gives smoother movement. A 2 lb ball pein or 4 lb club hammer is more effective than a little woodworker's claw hammer from a force application POV - surely such tools are not prohibitively expensive in Australia ? Looking forward to seeing how this developes. Best wishes.

[@artisanmakes]

Fair enough so. Glad to know that there is some reasoning behind it

[@WayneCook306]

Great job so far, 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

[@Expedient_Mensch]

Okay, this vid reminds me of one of my favourite Paul Kelly songs. "I've done all the ......"

[@hedning003]

want a tip? mount the entire dro-scale on a bracket BEHIND the carrige..in your case it will probably hit the back wall, but that's what i did when i realized it woud be in the way,so i made a beefy holder for it and mountet in behind the lathe completley

[@19mati67]

I'm using a magnetic strip scale, and it works great. The only negative is that magnet collects all the steel chips.

[@jeffarmstrong1308]

Thank you for this. Although I know how to use a dovetail cutter in theory I have never seen one actually used. I have avoided projects calling for dovetails for this reason. Your demonstration and comments are very useful and a project that I have been putting off for too long can now be attempted.

[@GeorgeAlex-j6k]

Very nice. You certainly make that little mill earn it's keep.

[@joshclark44]

You could probably make a quick little bracket for your angle grinder to cut straight, sort of like a router. It wouldn't take up space like a bandsaw, and i would think it would be rather cheap and simple. Why didn't you use the big flycutter for the cross slide, though? It wouldn't have been that much difference, i guess, but you do have one that big. Love the giant projects, though! Upgrading the lathe again! 😂 and i can see why you were trying to get that scraper working, too. If it were me, I'd probably machine both dovetails to 60° but i know that's not particularly time efficient or necessary, lol

[@richardcarter207]

If you need big rectangular chunks of steel, aluminium or maybe cast iron get in touch with you local laser cutting service. They usually have a minimum charge. Not every laser, water or plasma cutter can do 50mm steel but there's usually one place per region who can do it.

[@jt6802]

Consider changing to a magnetic encoder which is MUCH slimmer. I'm using a 1u MCS200 mounted on the side of the cross slide. I put the reader outside the tail stock and lost less than 1mm of tailstock space.

[@michaelclark9409]

Left over swarf makes a great stew base.

[@kbye5323]

Well done!

[@Dermot-t2d]

great job mate. I would love to know how to calculate the dovetail geometry

[@toblexson5020]

Seeing how much you like your insert cutters, might it be a decent project to try to make an indexable insert endmill? The geometry is probably a bit complex, but with your rotary indexer it should be possible right? Although it depends on if you'd see a use for a 20mm or whatever diameter endmill.

[@joshua43214]

Thats a lot of work. On the subject of materials, the material you wanted is called Durabar. It is a continuous cast iron, that comes in many sizes. It is vastly superior to the material you used for this application - it has very good damping properties, is much more ductile, and tends to rust less. It is also much much easier to machine. Your lathe is not even closely powerful enough for the modest loss in strength or elasticity to be an issue.

[@artisanmakes]

Thanks for the info. Not even sure of anyone near my town sells it, let alone in the size that I need. Like I said, sourcing large material is so difficult when you only need small quantities like I need.

[@pawekowalski7469]

Great project !! 👍👍👍

[@nefariousstylo9943]

Nearly scrapped a $4k slug of stainless taking too much on one side... It happens...

[@bluebanana6753]

Haven't watched it yet. But i know it's going to be good. I have the same lathe just the 700mm versionand factory dro (got the dro by accident). I mainly do thread cutting on barrels, so I'm not really worried about the same things. But I still do some precision work on it for myself.

[@JasonAWilliams-IS]

If you had a band saw that off cut would have been straighter, easier, and less cleanup to it after. Looking forward to this project!

[@chrisbebensee334]

Shoulda used your super hacksaw. I've been using hacksaws for everything after watching your videos. Melts right through!

[@markharrison9622]

After doing machine work for over 40 years, may I make a suggestion? Instead of using finishing tools for your work, please look into some roughing cutters. YG-1 makes awesome inexpensive roughers. Their website gives you rpm and feed rates for all materials. I prefer their fine tooth roughers, I think they just cut better and cooler. They make their cutters in carbide, HSS, and powdered metal. The powder metal cutters are the cheapest and work the best (in my humble opinion). It will also save a lot of wear and tear on your machine. Oh, and if I may, please get power feed for your X axis, you're working way too hard 😊. I think you will be amazed at how well those roughers work, and I think a ½ rougher is about $20-30. I'm not really sure, I'm just trying to help make your life a little bit easier. Thanks.

[@kigara3906]

I think he is using mill and inserts from aliexpress or amazon (same sellers as aliexpress) for 10$ pack of inserts and 3$ per endmill or so. He even comments how his choice of tools is pure price driven. So i dont think he will buy 20-30$ mill/insert per piece.

[@markharrison9622]

Oh, ok, just trying to help, man, that looked like a lot of work though...

[@kigara3906]

@@markharrison9622 Sure, im not hating on you. I even left comment how he is using polished ground carbide inserts which purpose is to cut aluminium on steel and it fails before he can finish part. 😆 We all want help him. 🤣 Why work eficiently and with ease when you can bruteforce it. 🙃

[@danp1224]

Roughing end mills helped me end my mini lathe mill table in 3 month and not a year lol. well worth getting.

[@artisanmakes]

I own a few roughers and in retrospect I probably should have used them for making the t slot channels.

[@mike9500]

Awesome job man!

[@ttnd3d_387]

Perhaps You can ask where the metal is cut by laser or plasma. They can have metal residues of various alloys.

[@johnrussell6620]

I did not see it mentioned--TLDR 256 comments, At 19:20, a lot of the time when you cut dove tails, the material is mounted at "55 DEGREES" left and right and a slot cutter, cuts most of the area that the tips of the dove tail cutter cuts, so they don't need to remove so much material. eventually they cut their portion of the cut, last in the process. You can also do 1 or 2 more roughing passes with a conventional mill to get even more material removed before the dove tail cutter even touches the material. Maybe you could use your ANGLE GRINDER, THEN YOUR HACK SAW, to rough-out the majority of the dove tail first?? Thanks for making this video!

[@vivigarr]

I loved the one you did for your previous lathe. I plan on doing the same for mine some time. Since its an older lathe it has rounded edges and wasn't built to use a DRO with since they didn't exist back then. Do you plan to ever make a taper attachment for your lathe? It would be an interesting build to watch!

[@richardcooke9948]

Clamp a piece of cardboard to the mill table as a chip guard.

[@howardosborne8647]

I often use cut up cereal packet cardboard on the mill to contain the chips from flying everywhere.

[@aeroderek]

Frank Hoose made some opposing L bent acrylic sheets for this. I haven't done it yet myself but I'll use a corner bracket and 2 sheets. I haven't checked if his stuff is still available after he sold the website

[@easyBob100]

This is the first time I've ever seen anyone cut a large piece of steel like it was a log lol.

[@stephanc7192]

Great project

[@felixcosty]

Thanks for the video. That ringing you are hearing as you hit it with a chisel, is why you do not use steal, that ringing will be there in the finished product. That and as you machine it to size the chance of warping is very high, unless you normalize the steal. Ductile iron would be a way better choose to make the parts.

[@artisanmakes]

It didn’t seem to present as an issue the last time I did I this but it’s something to look out for. I wish I had a furnace big enough to normalise it lie I’ve done in the past. For what it’s worth most of the stresses in crs is on the outermost part of the steel, and since I’ve taken a chuck out of each side it’ll hopefully have less tendency to warp. It’s been a few weeks since all this was filmed and it hasn’t moved at all.

[@felixcosty]

@@artisanmakes Worked for a company that just use mother nature to help with stress relieving. They would machine a part close to size then put the part outside for a year then machine to finish size. These where very very expensive parts so worth the time and effort. There are some other YT creators out there that could help with the normalizing, or you are lucky and have a piece of steel that has been around for a while and is good to machine. If this part does not work out for you look into ductile irons. Good luck.

[@artisanmakes]

Thankyou. I just have trouble getting large piece of bar stock, in small cut to length sizes regardless of the material. I'm not a machinist (this is a hobby) so material is always a tricky area for me when I need large stock. I have a good relationship with a supplier but they deal with mainly with steel. I did speak to them about cast iron (I have bough cast from them before) but what they supply is round bar, and getting bar stock in my preferred size was going to be a months wait and I'd have to buy 3m of the stuff to satisfy the minimum order.

[@felixcosty]

@@artisanmakes I understand you and this be just a hobby, just giving you some info. In Canada and USA there is a place called Metal Supermarkets, and MacMaster Carr with have all different kinds of metal cuts, in the USA they are one of the best for hobby people.

[@Jimbo-t2h]

Great work!

[@lancer2204]

14:52 that sounded terrible Nice work and recovery! Also disappointed you didn't turn the hacksaw blade 90°😅

[@donsundberg5730]

They do make cast iron bars. I don't know about where you live, I am assuming Australia, but mail order industrial supply places here in the US carry it. As noted in other comments, you do gain the advantage of dampening.

[@AikiFuz]

It’s impossible to fault your determination, but your milk crate is a giant spring absorbing a lot of the kinetic energy you want going into the workpiece, re-emitting it to change the work’s location in all 3 axes. If you can’t use a tree section, a stack of wood held closely together with carriage bolts would make the task easier.

[@artisanmakes]

Yeah isn't it just. My outdoor "workbench" station is as basic as it gets

[@johnrussell6620]

At 21:20, you could tale a 'Dual Action' or an 'Orbital Sander' to give it a "non directional" final finish, or give it a 'Machine Turned' or 'Jeweled', final finish, without removing any "Dimensional " metal amounts.

[@willbar1961]

Stress relieve the steel.

[@artisanmakes]

I don’t have a furnace big enough for this piece

[@willbar1961]

@artisanmakes 😬

[@artisanmakes]

I any event most of the stresses are at the outer layer of the steel and I’ve machined away a huge chuck of it it’ll have less tendency to move in the future.

[@RustyInventions-wz6ir]

Very interesting video. Nice work.

[@jasonhull5712]

I would say you made it look easy my friend, but my bandsaw would likely disagree.. 😊 Cross slide looks great 👍

[@ToreDL87]

This is the first time I've seen a complete redesign confused with rebuild.

[@benni5941]

I've watched enough of your videos that I shouldn't have been surprised that the cold chisel remark was sarcastic foreshadowing, but here I am surprised and laughing like a fool 🤣

[@eddietowers5595]

At this point, why haven’t you built a band saw? Michael Uphoff has built a nice one.

[@RonnieRose-f5x]

Ahhh man I was looking forward to seeing that hunk of metal being cut with the hacksaw 😂😂 sorry bro had to mess with ya..... I absolutely love your videos

[@Metalheadmachine24]

You would make a badass video of a portaband saw turned bandsaw.

[@notagunfreak8146]

When hammering dont do it on a crate, piece of wood on the ground is better. It looses its energy each impact its like half as effective.

[@Brian18741]

5:22 I was like, man he's going to pull out the hacksaw 🤣

[@scroungasworkshop4663]

Well done 👍.

[@GreatOldOne]

Regarding the dro scale, have you considered swapping it out for a magnetic tape? I have one on the cross slide of my lathe, attached to the underside of it in a shallow channel down the middle of the dovetail. The reader head then sits at the end of the slide, out of the way of the tail stock. I bet you could find one that is compatible with your current dro unit.

[@artisanmakes]

No I much prefer glass scales for my machine. Cheers

[@3dprintingguru378]

I gotta say 55° dovetails are pretty common here in Europe, I even own a 55° straight edge cause all my machines feature 55° dovetails!

[@jayglenn837]

This channel looks super fun! Can't wait to follow along on this project, & I'll binge past videos in the meantime.

[@russelldold4827]

This is not meant to criticise. I know you made your decisions based on factors we're unaware of, such as delivery costs and delays, machine and tooling availability and limitations as well as the time versus cost issues. Where possible, buy hot rolled steel - you pay extra for those "close dimensions", and you machine each face anyway. If that's just not available, anneal before machining cold rolled steel - you could use a big pile of charcoal - you're going to machine the surfaces anyway. Consider cross t-slots, as Myford uses, to reduce the effects of reduced sections from the t-slots directly above the dovetail. Looking forward to the rest of this series!

[@artisanmakes]

It would have been nice to source hot rolled, but as I said in the video it isn't readily available in the size I need, given my small order quantity. I can get it but its a several week ordering process vs being able to pick the steel up the next day. I have in the past normalized my bigger piece of CRS but my furnace isn't big enough for this and given that NSW is moving into fire season, I don't think we'll be having any open fires till April next year. Cheers

[@russelldold4827]

​@@artisanmakes good luck - waiting with interest for the rest of this project.

[@johnrussell6620]

@@artisanmakes How about a charcoal grill running with extra charcoal? Maybe a couple of propane torches to give it a preheat before the charcoal is lit? Real coal?

[@artisanmakes]

Yeah I never throughly about that. I would assume that it would get hot enough