Well last week I took a day off work to run some errands, when I was finished, I was getting ready to put the little yellow toy away, and I stopped short of the garage and stared at my lathe, there it sat, as I left it so long ago when Mark asked me to go fishing with him. It was calling me, NO it was begging me to come and give it some much needed attention. Hmmm, what to do? Well with so much time off the machines, I could not very well just turn them on and start working on an unfinished steam engine, one needs to warm up, and get reacquainted, not just with the operations, but most importantly, with the safety precautions necessary when working on machine tools that can cut metal like butter, the body parts are no match!
I looked in the corner of the garage and there was an old piece of bamboo left over from who knows what, why was it even there? A HAH, I have an idea!
Some quick dimensions and YES it will work!
Open up the metal surplus drawer, some aluminum round stock and some brass ought to do just fine.
Where did I leave that head stock wrench? Took a darn long time just to remember where everything was, I had so strategically placed, made sense back then?
Here we go cut, cut, cut, measure, cut, cut, man I miss the smell of cutting fluid!
There we go, a little polishing…..
And we get this out of that!
Now to cut the brass, I think I will use the smaller lathe
Cut a chunk of bamboo, sand it down, a little stain, some clear gloss polyurethane and there you go!
Everything ready for assembly.
For the record, I was going to go NODELESS, but realized that I needed the node to support the insert cup, not to mention, it added a little more character.
A little epoxy, some drying time and PRESTO, finished!
Martha suggested that I add a piece of cork to the base (how *) to protect the fly tying bench, aka the dining room table!
Time for a test run……
How about that…..IT WORKS!
So when all said and done, a couple of nicks on the knuckles from some very thin shimstock, more powerful reading glasses needed, a freshly oiled up shop coat, and the realization that I need a little more practice to get back to where I was about 5 years ago before I touch my steam engine projects again.
Doug, thanks for the inspiration!
flybob
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