More milling operations on the required parts. Hammer tubes here.



I had to drill 20 precise holes for threading. I used a hardened steel shaft, ground, sculpted, and carved it into a precise drill bit. It's now the correct size, cuts a perfect hole in thick wall chrome moly tubing and allows the holes to be drilled without tearing down the set up and readjusting the whole thing. Nice clean holes of the perfect size. Big help.

Gary

Makin your own drill bits now ? Come on who does that ? I just can't believe some of the tooling and things you do Gary . Cherries, drills, springs and I'm sure the list goes on . That's what I like about coming to read here and even buy a couple things when able to. The ingenuity you use and I'm sure to make a much better parts than available through outsourcing
IF there even available !
Go Gary
Go Gary
Go Gary

Hi Kurt!

There will be a reason when I do things. For instance ... this drill bit. I wasnt just showing off. To put a regular drill bit into the mill - I'd have to use a morse taper shaft with a drill chuck on it. In length, that is over twice as long as the collet which holds the milling cutters which the machine was set up for during the milling operations. I'd have to raise the mill head to fit the chuck assembly into the mill head.

If I unlock the mill head and wind it up higher, I then have to readjust it relative to the center axis of the tube stock I was milling, and now need to drill. As you know, you can't put a drill bit into a regular collet unless you have a collet for every infinite size of bit. Sure - you will have a 3/16, 1/4, 7/32, 5/16, 3/8, etc., but will you have a .159" ? Do they even make it?

So, it's late Saturday night, and this is the next step to show progress on the Outriders. In order to keep my set up and not spend 20 minutes resetting the mill (which is also a pain). I needed a shorty .159" drill bit - very short flutes so it was self starting, would not wander and/or break. I needed it with a 3/8" shank ideally - which is the collet size for most of the mill cutters I was using previously.

I took a length of drill hard 3/8" shaft. Put it in a drill and, with a bench grinder, I rough ground it down to around .180". I then put it in a lathe and precision ground it to .159". After that I took it to a the bench, and hand cut in the spiral, flutes, and relieved all the cutting edges.

Back in the mill about 1/2 an hour later, it cut the holes perfectly. Self started. I plug checked them and they were tight and straight. Ill have the bit for many years. I still have bits I use from 1974. Many of the specialty bits I've signed and dated. When I pull out a bit from 97, I realize that if I had that "helper" I wouldn't own a bit older then a week old - cause they'd all be broken or burnt to a blue nub.

It is rewarding when you make a bit out of tool steel, to cut tool steel, and it works better then new production manufactured products. Most of those arrive dull. And when you pull out a bit you made 15 years ago that's still useful, it's a smile.

Thanks Kurt. Glad you liked it.

Gary



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2014 04:13PM by barnespneumatic.

Really cool how you make so much assorted tooling yourself. It is amazing how a basic understanding of metal cutting allows one to try his/her own tools. Sometimes with success and other times it means trying another approach. Experience will dictate if you get it right the first time for the particular operation you want to perform.

Great seeing your projects come together!

Pedro

I guess sometimes you've just gotta get creative about your tooling if you want to get things done. I've seen a guy "chase" some buggered-up female pipe threads in an aluminum fuel tank fitting using an iron pipe nipple that was hand-filed into a home-made "tap", and it actually worked!

I completely understand that scenario . One of the machines that I run has ISO holders and different MT sizes . It has a 6 place magazine with different sizes in it but I keep one place open for the funny sizes that come through the blueprints . I have had 2 adapters hooked to final size drill adding up to almost 15" in length . As you know when you do that length , you get a lot of flextion! ( made up word) the drills and adapters also have internal coolant system that atomizes vegetable oil out the center of each flute . So... Besides being long , they are hollow too adding to flexication .( made up word ) and as we all know vibration caused by wobble makes for crappy oval holes ! On the other side of spectrum , last week I had to drill some shim plates for vessel feet . They were 1.312" holes thu 3" mild steel plate . 12 plates in all with 2 holes each . No pilot hole just smoke thru with one 184° drill insert ! My drill speed was 375 rpm and feed was .006 fpm. I did increase speed to 400 after a couple of hole due to chip break inspection and after breaking the carbide , I switched to cobalt . I did get all holes drilled but didn't get out till 8:00 pm which is past my normal bedtime .I did sleep really good though so I can truly appreciate ALL those little things you have done for for the airgun world ! Especially the Barnes world of quality airguns .
Thanks again for sharing your secrets.

Gary,

As I was reading the post, I was trying to ID the tool and couldn't. I was thinking no way is he making his own drill bits. Amazing!

Lon

Hey, give Gary a chance and he'll be smelting his own ore for steel making and growing his own elk for the antlers.

Well of course! We all know the quality is in the smelt and feed!