slim_boy_fat
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A neighbour is due to celebrate her 80th birthday at the end of the month and I hit on the idea of making a small gift for her.
A piece of stainless with the 80 in stencil form, mounted on a small piece of oak which I have left over from another project. I've cut the stencil [created in Word] and transferred it to the s/steel in matt black, but now have to cut the numbers out to leave 'holes'. I'm not going to try with the plasma [s/steel is scarce in my bin atm, so nerves + shaky hand when cutting ] and hit on the idea of drilling a series of small holes at points round the inside of the black areas.
Then, I'd either:
a) find my smallest milling cutter and try, wearing leather work gloves, to 'freehand' round the numbers, assuming the mill doesn't grab and amputate any digits , but I'll tape up the edges with several layers of gaffer tape. I have a small rotary table but no way of fixing it on the mill [yet]. No spare lathe chuck to fix to it either.
b) try the same in the pillar drill
c) rig up some means of using a drill bit just small enough at a suitable depth to emulate (a).......
d) try to find a small carbide cutter to replace the drill in (c) Unlikely.
e) dig out my Dremel kit to see if there's anything suitable in it - this might be the best option as I have a flexi-drive and it'd be easier to control, but being stainless I'm not sure if the bits which come with the Dremel would be up to the job.
Any ideas other than those above??
I sense this isn't going to end well.......but I have time to go back to the drawing board.
A piece of stainless with the 80 in stencil form, mounted on a small piece of oak which I have left over from another project. I've cut the stencil [created in Word] and transferred it to the s/steel in matt black, but now have to cut the numbers out to leave 'holes'. I'm not going to try with the plasma [s/steel is scarce in my bin atm, so nerves + shaky hand when cutting ] and hit on the idea of drilling a series of small holes at points round the inside of the black areas.
Then, I'd either:
a) find my smallest milling cutter and try, wearing leather work gloves, to 'freehand' round the numbers, assuming the mill doesn't grab and amputate any digits , but I'll tape up the edges with several layers of gaffer tape. I have a small rotary table but no way of fixing it on the mill [yet]. No spare lathe chuck to fix to it either.
b) try the same in the pillar drill
c) rig up some means of using a drill bit just small enough at a suitable depth to emulate (a).......
d) try to find a small carbide cutter to replace the drill in (c) Unlikely.
e) dig out my Dremel kit to see if there's anything suitable in it - this might be the best option as I have a flexi-drive and it'd be easier to control, but being stainless I'm not sure if the bits which come with the Dremel would be up to the job.
Any ideas other than those above??
I sense this isn't going to end well.......but I have time to go back to the drawing board.