Following my posting of the Joe Pie tap wrench on the Guild forum there was a bit of discussion on the types of tap wrenches in use and one member shared a BA tapping guide that he had bought commercially. Which I thought was a great idea for tapping holes that are too inconvenient to fit in a vice

Having been given the idea, I couldn’t resist having a go at making one this morning.

I even managed to use the reject first attempt at making a drawbar for the Princess which I broke during machining due to me doing the wrong order of operations. I keep one of those square plastic trays that Slaters pack their small items like plunger pick-ups horn guides etc. on my workbench and all my small offcuts of brass and nickel go into it. Once I had machined each end off it was perfect for the guide bush.

I probably over engineered it in so much as I turned the end of the bush down to 5mm for 1.6mm and drilled a 5mm hole in the flat bar which is 1.6mm thick. It was a nice tight fit but I realised that due to the bar being drawn, it wasn’t exactly flat on top and the guide sat at a slight angle. still having the coordinates in the mill from drilling the hole I used a 6mm end mill to mill a recessed flat to accommodate the bush. I checked for squareness with a 1-2-3 block and then soldered the bush in.

The hole in the bush is 3.3mm and will take my 6 -12ba taps freely but with virtually no sideplay. I also have a 14ba tap and I might at some point add another guide bush at the other end of the ‘handle’ with a smaller hole to take that.

I mentally kicked myself up the backside and got the sand pipes installed a couple of days ago so yesterday I took a break and made up another couple of Joe Pie inspired tools, which he shows in use in one of his videos.

These were an additional tap spinner which has an aluminium knurled grip but a steel inner so it shouldn’t wear with use. I also made a depth stop to fit over the tap if I wish to only tap a hole to a specific depth.

The two fit together as above, or you can use them independently as below.

In the video, Joe showed that he made his in pairs. This is so that he could have a taper tap in one and a bottom tap in the other. Having made the initial example, I still had a bit of material left so I decided to see if I could make a combined tap spinner and depth stop.

It turns out I could, in the image below you can see the steel core inside the aluminium grip.

Just in case you are wonder what I used to make them I used the remains of one of the handles on the scarp die holder. I put it in the lathe and carefully parted the aluminium where I thought the steel roughly ended (as it happens I could have gone a little further) then having noted how securely the aluminium was attached to the steel core I realised that I could turn the remains of the casting attached to the bar into a round usable piece to make something from and the idea was born. I also have the other side to do something similar from. I can see more tools for even finer taps in the future. Unless I think of another tool to make instead.

Those who joined me for my Gauge O Guild an Evening With Session will have heard me mention YouTuber Joe Pie as someone whom I have learned a lot of techniques and in the past I have made a couple of his shop project tools

Needing a distraction from my current endeavour which has been quite frustrating I decided to follow this video and make another small tap handle. I have previously made one similar to the one that he shows at the start of the video but I made the hole in it a bit big so it’s more suited to larger shanked taps.

As regular viewers of my posts will know I am a great believer in recycling and early this year I bought a job lot of vintage tools from eBay for the princely sum of £7.50 I really bought them for the 3MT-2MT sleeve that was included but there was also a very well made large tap wrench a Moore and wright imperial ruler, a set of sprung external calipers and a couple of 1″ die holders. Of the latter one was very well made and as I have a couple of 1″ dies will come in very useful. The second was a bit battered and had an aluminium casting for the die holder with a couple of 1/2″ steel bars as the handles. This I consigned to the useful bits box and so part of one of the handles became my material for making the miniature tap handle.

I popped the whole thing in the lathe and being very careful of the large lump in the middle I parted of approx 65mm (just over 2.5″) this allowed a little to tidy each end up bringing it back to a finished size of 62mm or a whisker under 2.5″ .

Then I followed Joe’s steps. I adjusted my hole dimensions to suit an M6 cap head screw so I drilled 5mm for the tapping size, 6.5mm clearance and then 10mm to recess the head of the screw. I drilled until the head was just proud of the end of the handle and then used a 10mm end mill to flatten the bottom of the hole and allow the screw to just sit inside the handle when fully screwed home.

I drilled a 4mm hole in the centre which will take up to a 4BA tap (It might take bigger but that’s the one that I measured as I mostly use smaller than that). Shown here with a 12 Ba tap inserted.

Lastly I heated it up and dropped it into some olive oil overnight to give it a nicely blued appearance – Although I had cleaned it with IPA I went back and did a small adjustment from which I didn’t clean the oil inside out again before the heating. Although I couldn’t see it, this must have created a bit of smoke, which set the workshop smoke alarm off. At least I know that it works.

This seems to be the only shot that I have of the X axis scale in place with it’s chip cover.

Then I mounted the display – you will note that the bottom Z Axis display is reading al zeros this is because at this point I was still awaiting the longer replacement scale.

There are quite a few options for mounting the display you can angle the bracket out from the side of the mill if you have somewhere to mount it. I chose to fix it to the bench alongside.

Then it was onto fitting the Z axis scale. This was reasonably straightforward in that I was able to fasten the scale itself directly to the rear of the column. I confess that I did initially get it slightly too low which reduced the amount that I could raise the head of the mill. Meaning that I had to redrill one of the holes higher up to get maximum height.

I was also able to finally use some of the brackets and mounting plates that came with the scales again fitting to the yoke which raises the head was reasonably straightforward.

What did find was that I had to turn some spacers from aluminium bar to get the alignment between the read head and the yoke so that it ran up and down smoothly without rubbing on the chip cover.

In conclusion, I am really happy with the DRO and now feel confident to do something similar on my lathe at some point. I do agree with Nick Baines comment that having that level of accuracy does tend to get you a little hung up on hitting 0.005 of a millimetre…

Not feeling at my best since the bank holiday I have let this thread slip a little.

So where were we?

The only possible mounting for the read head on the X axis is the end of the Y axis table. To do this I employed a couple more offcuts of aluminium angle these slightly deeper in section than that used on the Y axis read head.

 The brackets needed to fit around the Y axis lead screw so needed a bit of shaping

It did take a couple of tries to get a range of adjustment available in all the different elements of the Z shaped final mounting.

Having got this far with the mill assembled I couldn’t put off taking the mill to bits any longer to drill the end of the Y axis table.

After that it was just a case of reassembling it.

The X axis was a bit more involved in that it was harder to get access to even with the mill unbolted from the bench.

First job I found that the slots in the mounting plate were a bit tight for the M5 screws so I opened the slots with the mill.

I also milled the second slot to have vertical as well as horizontal movement as it’s important to have the scales both level horizontally and parallel to the travel of the table for the highest accuracy. As they come one slot is vertical and the other horizontal but being aluminium they are easy to modify with the mill.

After bluing up the rear face of the table I was lucky in that I had recently bought a couple basic C clamps to use for clamping one of my vices and my rivet press temporarily to the workbench when I need to. These fit quite nicely edge on in the T slot so I was able to clamp the mounting plate in position allowing me to move the table to either side of the column so that I could mark it up without removing the table at this stage.

Again, it was a bit of a squeeze but I was able to drill and tap the table without removing it.

The next task was working out how best to mount the reader but I will cover that in another post.

The next step was working out where to position the reader to get the full length of travel from it. I measured how much space the X axis scale would take up when fitted, added a couple of millimetres for clearance and used that as my forward limit. I then marked the base and drilled and tapped the base.

This is the Y axis scale fitted with it’s swarf cover and working.

I mentioned that I started with the Y axis first

There was a convenient ledge on the side of the bed casting which allowed me to add a parallel to get the backing plate up to the right height to mark for drilling the mounting holes. The 123 block is just holding it in position.

I added some engineers blue and marked the holes with a scriber then punched the centre.

Drilled, tapped and cleaned up with IPA

The backing plate in place, so far so good.

A trial fit of the scale to work out where the reader needs to be fastened to.

At this point I realised that I would need some packing pieces behind the mounting plate to make it stand off due to the useful ledge that I referred to earlier and allow the reader a clear track without being forced to run at an angle and to allow the fitting of the chip shield which didn’t quite fit when flush against the table.

I used a slitting saw to cut down some sheet material which some bar stock had been attached to to stop it being bent in the post. It’s quite interesting material in that it is two layers of thin aluminium bonded either side of some plastic material. Being layered it’s remarkably strong and light and I thought it too good to throw away so it went into my useful bits box.

You can just make out in this shot where I slotted the vertical mounting holes in the angle bracket, again to allow the reader to track without adding undue pressure. You can also see the packing strip between the mounting plate and the edge of the table.

The Warco items duly arrived and each scale, came with a main rear mounting bracket and a pair of additional mounting brackets (Shown below) and a selection of M4 and M5 cap screws.

Main mounting bracket.

These are the additional brackets that were spare as I only ended up using one of each along with some sections of aluminium angle which I had rescued from a set of shelves that I had dismantled.

To ensure that the job wasn’t stopped for lack of drill bits if I broke any, I put in and order to Drill Services Horley for a couple of 3.2mm and 4mm drill bits. Of course because I had them to hand I didn’t break a single drill bit.

All the holes drilled in the mill itself were done using a battery hand drill and being cast iron it was quite easy going if a bit messy.

The main mounting bracket holds the glass scale and then the read head is mounted so that when either the read head or the scale moves it reads off the distances. In my installation I have the scales mounted to the moving table axis and the read head’s fixed to the machine bed. On the Z axis this is reversed and the scale is fixed to the column of the machine and the read head moves up and down with the milling head.

I decided to start with the Y axis as being one of the shorter ones so easier to handle and definitely the easiest to access on the left side of the machine. However as soon as I took the 100mm scale out of the packaging I knew that I had made a mistake in getting a second 100mm scale for the Z axis although it would be fine if I was working with the vice or rotary table mounted on the bed it wouldn’t allow the head to come down far enough to mill anything directly mounted to the T slots of the table.

I immediately contacted Warco and explained my error and asked that since I hadn’t opened the second scale, would it be possible to return it, and swap it for a 200mm scale. They were happy to do so and would sort out any additional cost incurred once they had it back with them. I returned it to the address on the signature of the person who had sent the invoice. This proved to be a mistake as it turned out that they had moved from that address so the package was returned to me. I called them and advised that there would be a delay due to my sending it to the wrong address which was on their email.

I looked at the actual invoice and noted their new correct address and re sent it there. As good as their word they very quickly despatched the replacement and didn’t charge me a penny which despite my frustration at them not having the correct address on their correspondence I did appreciate.

For my birthday last October I received a Digital ReadOut (DRO) kit for my Sieg SX1 LP mini mill. I fitted it over a weekend last October and although I took photos as I did each stage, I haven’t yet got around to writing it up. Paul’s posts (@OzzyO) on fitting a DRO to his mill prompted me to get my finger out so that anyone who is interested will get a couple of takes on fitting them to different types of mill.

As I am not anywhere in the same league as Paul when it comes to machining, my first port of call when looking was to YouTube. To see if anyone had done a video on fitting a DRO to a similar mini mill. I was quite surprised that at that time there wasn’t any to be found (there may well be now as I haven’t looked since).

Having realised that I was essentially on my own, my first port of call was to ring Arc Euro Trade whom I bought the mill from. To ask if they did a DRO kit for my mill. I was a little surprised that they didn’t, as they seem to cater well with other accessories and tooling for the range of machines that they sell. Their recommendation was to talk to a company called Touch DRO who apparently do something suitable.

I have seen a few videos which featured Touch DRO units and confess that I was not keen on the idea. This is on the basis that they require the use of scales, which connect via Bluetooth to a tablet for the display. I spent 20 years in IT support and the last thing I want is yet another device.

Again on the basis of seeing a few videos on badged variants of the units supplied by Warco I opted to buy from them. I got a display reader, two x 100mm glass scales and one x 250mm.

The idea was that I would use one of the 100mm scales on the Y axis (front to back movement of the table for those unfamiliar with the axis terms) and the other for the Z axis which is the up and down movement of the mill head. This latter proved to be a mistake which I will elaborate upon later. The 250mm scale was to be used on the longer X axis table (which is what the LP designation of the model number refers to).