Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Its Inevitable.....


It comes every year at the same time, but winter always seems to catch us before we know it. Monday morning the windows in the unheated back mud room looked like this.


so we fired up the wood stove in the shop....


 and played with the milling machine...

My friend Jonathan needed to make some slots for captured nuts on some aluminum brackets for the directory signs he is making for the Gulf Of Maine Seaquarium.
So we figured we might as well try use the little milling machine I bought a year ago. Normally they retail for about $500 from Harbor Freight. I bought this one used for $200 as the previous owner had bought a bigger one. The mill is made in china so its best to not let your expectations run to wild. Surprisingly when we put the dial indicator on it the bit seemed to run true within a couple of thousands of an inch. But as soon as you start cutting the whole thing flexes somewhat.... like I said Cheap Chinese piece of junk. 

In this shot the mill was running but the camera managed to stop the bit mid turn.


a reasonable result....

I guess that's close enough...

the end result



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