northwest
Searching for the Holy Grail.........
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- Manchester UK
So, I have had a couple of people ask me this, how do you make screws look "finished"?
What they are referring to is the clean slot across the screw head. Well, this gives me a perfect opportunity to show off one of my restoration projects, a little Centec model A horizontal Mill. I bought this from a chap I know and he lives locally so I picked it up in bits and brought it home, the biggest bit:
I stripped it to it's component parts and had the main part of the castings shot blasted. I slowly built it back up and replaced the bearings (not cheap at all!!!!), made a couple of bushes from phosphor bronze and bought a 1Hp 3 phase motor for it:
The only part I don't have is the lever for the fast traverse and I have worked out a way to raise and lower the knee using the bits of a ratchet from a socket set:
I use various fixtures and thickness slitting saws to cut almost perfect screw head slots, some of the time I even get them central too. (I am sure those of you who have done this "by eye" know exactly what I mean).
It only really does one job as I confess to not having spent as much time with it as I should but it does that one job better than anything else.
Edit, just to add, it is not really everyone that can or indeed needs to go to this extreme, however most of the screws I make are actually seen and are highly visible.
What they are referring to is the clean slot across the screw head. Well, this gives me a perfect opportunity to show off one of my restoration projects, a little Centec model A horizontal Mill. I bought this from a chap I know and he lives locally so I picked it up in bits and brought it home, the biggest bit:
I stripped it to it's component parts and had the main part of the castings shot blasted. I slowly built it back up and replaced the bearings (not cheap at all!!!!), made a couple of bushes from phosphor bronze and bought a 1Hp 3 phase motor for it:
The only part I don't have is the lever for the fast traverse and I have worked out a way to raise and lower the knee using the bits of a ratchet from a socket set:
I use various fixtures and thickness slitting saws to cut almost perfect screw head slots, some of the time I even get them central too. (I am sure those of you who have done this "by eye" know exactly what I mean).
It only really does one job as I confess to not having spent as much time with it as I should but it does that one job better than anything else.
Edit, just to add, it is not really everyone that can or indeed needs to go to this extreme, however most of the screws I make are actually seen and are highly visible.