When making my mini tap holders some time ago, there was a discussion about making, versus buying tools over on Western thunder, where I mentioned that I could buy one from Arc for under £10.
I duly bought said tap follower from Arc Euro Trade and what a journey that turned out to be.
When it came the grub screw in the image fitted into the back of the tap follower to retain the spring.

Which in itself was fine aside from the fact that the body of the tap follower was too big to fit in either of my Jacobs chucks and although I could have swapped the chuck out for a collet chuck that would have been a lot of messing about each time I wanted to use the tap follower. My solution was to turn up a threaded pin to replace the grub screw. Which on the face of it is simple, except I couldn’t determine what thread* was in the tap follower as supplied, so I ended up re-tapping it to M10.

That done I gave it a whirl and found that the hole in the body is far too big with too much slop for the guide rods to actually hold the tap straight. Which of course is the whole point of the exercise…

Hopefully you can just make out the gap between the two in the close up below. What should be a close sliding fit is far from it.

As I had already modified it I couldn’t really return it to Arc Euro so I put it in a drawer in disgust and moved on.

Fast forward to a couple of days ago and I had need to tap another hole in the lathe and I just happened to have the length of 8mm stainless rod (which I use for tightening my collet chuck) in my hand when I saw the tap follower in the drawer. I took it out and quickly dismantled it and tested the 8mm rod inside the body of the tap follower. It was a perfect fit. I cut another length from the piece I have in stock, to suite a new double ended guide rod and then turned each end down to a close sliding fit. One end has a point, the other has a 60 degree countersink to accommodate taps with points on the end.

Now I have a tool that does what it was supposed to when I bought it. I cannot blame Arc for the initial problem of the shank not fitting my drill chucks because it does state the shank size on their website but I missed taking note of it.

The poorly fitting guide rods is another matter.

You live and learn and I suspect that in this instance I would have been better making my own tool or buying a better quality example in the first place. At least I have been able to remedy it and I may at some point make up a second shorter version to utilise the spare guide rods.

*Having checked the Arc Euro Trade site as I was typing this to confirm that they do indeed note the shank size, I also noted that all the other measurements although primarily stated in millimetres, are in fact conversions of imperial sizes.

As I don’t possess any imperial taps or dies I was doomed from the start in working out what size the thread might be.

While fitting the inside motion subassembly to the Princess I had need of a slender scriber.

I do have an engineers scriber

But it was too big to get in where I needed it. I also have a couple of needle pointed steel inserts that came with an aluminium handle which wasn’t as resilient as the inserts.

I could have just held it in a pin vice and got the job done but where’s the fun in that. So I decided to turn up a handle for it from a length of 5mm nickel rod.

Once I had done the job on the Princes. I thought that if I wanted to be able to use it going forward, it could really do with a cap to keep it and me from harm. So I made a cap for it. I didn’t think to take a photo of the scriber before I altered it to take the cap but imagine a taper on the end and no thread or relief.

The cap screws on and covers the point, making it completely harmless until needed.

While doing a recent loco repair for a fellow Guild Member, I found that I was constantly swapping the head of my Markits nut spinner between 8BA and 12BA with the result that quite a few times it was the head of the nut spinner that unscrewed not the nut as I hadn’t tightened it enough. I use the 8, 10 and 12BA heads most frequently and rarely use the 14BA and 16BA heads. Thinking about it, I don’t think that I have ever used the 6BA head so far although I do have some 6BA hardware so I probably will at some point.

For those unfamiliar with what I am talking about this is the ‘Markits’ version

I decided to make some spare handles so that I could have the 8, 10 and 12BA heads on individual handles and then fit the 14BA and 16BA to a double ended handle and second double handle for the 6BA and any other size that I might come up with at some point. In the meantime I will make a rounded end insert just to finish it off.

I suspect that Markits use 10mm hex bar to make theirs. I did mine the longer way using 10mm round and then milling flats on them. Of course I had no sooner cut them all and drilled for the thread when I found a length of 10mm brass hex but isn’t that always the way.

If anyone wishes to do something similar with theirs, the thread on the Markits heads is M5 x 0.8

A bit of online research found me a photo of what it should look like so I set about cleaning it up. It turns out the handle was on upside down.

By good fortune I had a couple of pieces of rod in my stores that would make a replacement for the depth guide. I had a choice of Nickel Silver or Silver steel so I chose the latter. as being more suited to a machine.
I turned a 60 degree point on it as looking about right from the photo and then milled a flat for the work piece to rest against.

Next I went over it with a wire brush in my Dremel and I was pleasantly surprised when most of the surface rust came off leaving the painted surface underneath. I quite like the lived in look so I am not going to repaint it as I had originally planned. all that remains is for m to fasten it to a suitable piece of wood and hopefully to make some addition anvils for it.

In my searches I determined that as bought they came with 4 anvils whereas mine only has one at the minute. The good news is that a member of Western Thunder has one of these so I have asked if he will take photos of the additional anvils and get me some key dimensions and I will have a go at making some more. I recently scrapped a duff Compound Mitre saw that I had, had for 20 years. Before scrapping it, I recovered lots of useful bits of steel and aluminium. One of the former should be just right to make the anvils.

After collecting a couple of pre orders from Finney7 and Metalsmith and then buying other bits and pieces including some driving wheels for a J21 (I already have tender wheels for it. I risked a look on the Bring and Buy stand. I went later because I didn’t want to be tempted by a too good to miss kit as I have far too many as it is. What I did find for the princely sum of £19 was a Double Leaky Rivet press. I was amazed that it hadn’t been snapped up and I wasn’t the only one, as when I was paying for it the gut who served said that he thought that as he was putting the price label on he thought that someone would be taking it out of his hands.

It needs a little TLC and at first glance I knew it was missing the depth guide but otherwise pretty good condition for something that will be getting on for 30 or more years old.

This thread is to share the journey of it’s restoration.

Yesterday I had turned a spacer for the cross slide leadscrew which along with the extra backlash nut that I made earlier has removed all the backlash from the cross slide.
This morning saw the final piece in the current puzzle, the replacement for the missing compound handle. Made from 8mm stainless I am really pleased with how much different the lathe performs now that I have made the improvements.  

After spending most of the day trying different thicknesses of shims to get the most rigid, but sliding fit the carriage is back together. As I had hoped a 1/4 turn of the rear cap head screw locks the carriage.

I also cut a spacer/shim to fit on top of the feed nut to do away with the need for rocking about a grub screw. I have left the grub screw in place to stop the hole filling with swarf but it’s no longer functional.

This is the spacer in place before attaching the cross slide.

Next was reassembly of the apron, cross and compound slides ready for a test run. It all went back together nicely but getting the main lead screw cover in the right place for the power feed half nuts to engage/disengage properly was a right pain and took several adjustments before everything ran smoothly.

I still need to make a couple more spacers/shims to take more backlash from the cross slide but I needed the lathe back together to turn them.

A bit of a milestone reached this evening as it’s almost ready to reassemble. I just need to cut some lengths of M6 studding to fasten the bottom slide bars on with. Then once the basic carriage is reassembled and fitted on the ways, I need to mark out, drill and tap the carriage lock before reassembling the cross and compound slides.

There wasn’t a lot of depth and I wanted them countersunk to retain as much cross slide travel as i can also I doubt if these will ever get unscrewed again once finally fitted so I used M6 button headed cap screws instead of the usual deep headed type.

This is what it will look like when all fitted together.

The end support piece and the bottom of the carriage lock are made from the same piece of bar (eBay purchase) and must be free machining as recommended by Mike Evans, because they machined, drilled and tapped so much easier than the steel that I made the other parts from.

The first bit of the carriage work is now complete and I am happy with how it’s gone so far.

Next is more character building work with a hacksaw…

Next comes the most daunting part so far, machining the carriage casting to square up the cut outs in each side to take the extension pieces which will support the carriage stop.

Being a casting, the very nature of it is rounded corners and rough finish. At the very least the faces needed flattening to take the machined block which is to be let into each cut out. As I was studying the cut outs to determine how best to machine them, I noted that at the side where the inverted V was machined into the base there was a distinct slope to the edge of the cut out.

When I check this with a protractor it was almost 80 degrees. There wasn’t enough casting left to make this edge vertical without cutting into the inverted V so it made sense to machine this edge to 80 degrees. I reasoned that cutting the opposite edge to the same angle would also help relive any potential stresses on the M6 screws that I plan use to fasten these infill blocks to the carriage, when the lock is tightened down.

I then machined the ends of the infill blocks to suit the angled cut outs.

All this was made less stressful by the knowledge that a replacement carriage casting is only £23 plus P&P.

Although I have been waiting for delivery of various bits of metal and fixings which have been trickling in over the last few days (I have everything I need now, I think or should that be hope). I haven’t been idle.

I got the stainless steel lock nuts for tensioning the Gibs on the two slides and managed to get those ready to refit.

The last photos also show an anti backlash nut/block which I hope will take out the backlash from the cross slide lead screw. It’s an idea I got from the US YouTuber that I mentioned (username of Dr Jim) who made his from oil impregnated bearing bronze. I looked into getting some and nearly had a heart attack so settled for testing the concept in acrylic as I had seen another person do who had fitted anti backlash blocks to a home made CNC Mill.

Whilst making the anti backlash nut/block was quite simple. Finding out the thread size/pitch was a bit of a challenge and I am grateful to members of the Model Engineer forum who between a few relies gave me the information that I needed to work it out.

Why was it so difficult you might ask. Well, I have previously mentioned that the machine is imperial but fitted with Digital Read Outs on the cross slide. From what I have read, when fitting the DRO kit’s the lead screw is replaced as part of the upgrade. I rang Chronos who are the supplier of DRO kits in the UK who told me that the lead screws included in the kits are metric. On this basis it seemed logical that the cross slide leadscrew may in fact be metric.

As you might imagine a query on the ME forum elicited quite a few helpful answers and a few less than helpful ones thrown in for good measure. Ultimately I was pointed in the direct of a US site and advised that some of the machines actually came factory fitted with DRO’s and they retained imperial lead screws. With the help of replies that were specific with information I finally worked out that my cross slide leadscrew is a left hand thread 3/8″ 20TPI. Part of my difficulty was that I had no idea of how BSF threads were actually measured as I have never had cause to buy or measure any BSF fixings. All my experience has been in Metric or for modelling purposes, BA screws etc. Where we specify the whole thread length.

A set of taps was duly ordered from RDG engineering supplies (£10.96 inc. postage) and the job was done.

 I had a first go at Fly cutting with the mill last night.
The pieces of bar in the last post are what’s known as hot rolled steel. Hit rolled steel is the cheapest way to buy steel but you do get an outer coating of oxidisation and the edges are far from flat/square

For the two larger pieces I needed to square up the edges and then flatten one face. I had two options use an end mill or fly cut them. I used an end mill on the edges bt for the larger area it would have taken a fair amount of time to flatten it with my largest end mill with is 10mm. With a fly cutter I could do the whole area in one or two passes at each cutting depth.
The other thing that appeals to me about fly cutting is that it uses a piece of tool steel similar to a lathe tool and is something that I can confidently re-sharpen in the workshop on the grinder. I have no means of re-sharpening end mills so they become quite expensive consumables.

This is the fly cutter in action, it was spinning at 740 rpm and I was taking off 0.04mm per pass

Now onto a scarier upgrade.
This is the bottom of the main carriage.

The two black strips that you can see screwed to the underneath of the carriage are hardened steel and they stop the carriage from lifting. As you can imagine the needs to be a bit of clearance between these strips and the underside of the carriage to allow it to slide along the bed of the lathe. As delivered this clearance is adjusted and fine tuned by the set screws and locking nuts that you can see between the cap screws. As I understand it these lead to cracking of the hardened plates over time.

I have seen a few ways to over come this but the best way that I have seen is to remove these grub screws and replace them with an appropriate thickness of brass shims. The person I saw who added shims just had lots of bits of shim balanced in between the two surfaces but a Gent in the US improved upon that by making a jig to drill out the shims to match the hole spacing of the main cap screws thus preventing them from being dislodged while being refitted to the lathe.

Next is to replace the cap screws with stainless studs and nyloc nuts and then remove one of the hardened strips and replacing it with a mild steel strip of more substantial proportions.

There are a couple more bit’s of material that I am waiting for so the rest of the description will have to wait until then.

But in the meantime, the next job is to mill out the carriage where the blue blocks are to take the two pieces of square stock in the image these will be screwed to the ends of the carriage in the milled gaps and will form the anchors for the carriage stop.

When I picked up the new lathe and gave it the once over I noted that there had been some upgrades carried out already which rather surprised me that whoever had done it hadn’t fitted a carriage lock etc.
One of the other recommended improvements that people make is to fit a swarf guard to the back of the apron (for those that don’t know what an apron is and I didn’t it’s the gear housing for the carriage hand wheel which also houses the auto feed mechanism). Most people that I have seen make such a cover have done it from thin perspex sheet which works fine but I was delighted when I saw that mine had a brass cover.

I was even more delighted when I took it to bits and found out just how well it had been made. You will also note the grease nipple. Grease nipples have been fitted to all the bearing housings.

Prior to buying the lathe I did quite a bit of research and one of the things that I picked up was that in being made to a price, these Chinese mini lathes lack the rigidity of their bigger higher end ‘professional’ cousins. What quickly became apparent though was that they can be made much more rigid for the outlay of some time and very little money.

What the Unimat had but the Sieg hasn’t, are the means to lock the carriage, cross slide and compound slides. I have already attended to the latter two by drilling and tapping more M4 holes along the Gib strips.

I did the compound slide first, you can see the new holes by the remains of the marker pen that I used for marking out.

Then the cross slide, I didn’t need as many additional screws on this one as it was already supported towards the end of the Gibs

Two screws on each slide wont have lock nuts on them and they will act as the locks when tightened the rest will have grub screws and locking half nuts to position the Gibs to allow smooth travel of the slides.

Prior to Christmas I had decided that the week between Crimbo and the New Year I would spend ironing out the wrinkles with the new lathe.

First I stripped down, cleaned and deburred all my chucks which you can see in the photo of my workbench in the last post.

The lathe came with two 3 jaw chucks (80mm and 100mm) and a 4 jaw chuck.
I have seen a few reviews on YouTube of Chinese import chucks and it seems that although basically sound bits of kit, to keep the price down they don’t do any cleaning or deburring post machining which means that many of them have all the grinding dust present inside which if mot cleaned out will drastically reduce the life of the chuck.

The 4 jaw chuck cannot have been used because when I tried it before stripping it down to clean one of the jaws wouldn’t actually close due to burrs in the slides. I also took the opportunity to strip down and clean another 3 jaw 80mm chuck that I had bought in October with my rotary table for the mill. The latter is actually the best manufactured of all of them needing very little to getting running smoothly.
Next up was the ball handle for the compound/top slide. I didn’t take a photo of it prior to starting work on it but it should look like the one on the left (from the cross slide)

I am not sure if the handle had been broken off at some point or just crudely sawn off but I wanted to replace the handle part. I am pretty sure that I could probably buy a spare from Amadeal but where is the fun in that.
So I made a fixture out of an M10 cap screw a couple of nuts and some washers to hold it securely in the milling vice and drilled it almost to the bottom. I did consider that I might have to drill it right through because I didn’t think that I had an M6 plug tap but I found one in a drawer so I was able to retain the chromed ball.

The plan is to make a handle similar to the other one from stainless steel rod once I get the lathe back together.

A post on Western Thunder asking for photos of members work spaces tempted me to take these and subsequently share them here.

To the right of my first image showing the the bench, the upper cupboard door houses my spray booth and working back from there is a small worktop with my Ultrasonic cleaner and then a sink with drainer taking up the remainder of that wall.