Tooling Around – My Workshop

I have slowly been acquiring some more tooling, both for the lathe and for the milling machine.

it is so true that you will end up spending the cost of your machine and then some acquiring tooling, at least if you are careful with your spindle choices you can re-use these items on larger machines if you ever decide to upgrade at some later date.

I have won a couple of good buys on ebay for second hand items as well as a few new items:

An 11 inch magnetic Sine Plate for £25.00 + P&P.

A set of Eclipse 231 V blocks for £20.00 + P&P, normally around £130.00 new.

A pair of 3×2.5×2″ angle plates for £7.95 each +P&P.

A complete set of 8, 16DP 14.5 degree PA involute gear cutters for £46.00 +P&P (normally around £15.00 each second hand, or £21.60 each new from RDG Tools).

These will allow me to cut any gear I decide I need for my Mellor lathe. I was considering making my own gear cutters as per the examples in Mikes Workshop, I may yet still do this for other gear profiles such as GT2 gears.

Some carbide insert lathe tooling mainly with 8mm shank (parting tool, round tip, square offset, diamond tip, triangular tip, boring bar and external threading tools) from JB Cutting Tools, who have a stand at most of the model engineering shows, as well as at the National Kit Car Show at Stoneleigh near Leamington Spa.

Their prices are pretty good anyway, however they give even better prices at the shows and throw in additional tips and knock the prices down even further if you buy a number of items at the same time, I opted for silver tips as spares for most of the tools as these work better with aluminium, but chose an imperial 55 degree threading insert as a spare for the metric 60 degree tip. Some of the inserts are interchangeable – the square offset and the boring bar use the same inserts, plus the diamond tip can also be used for external threading as it also has a 60 degree tip. Unfortunately they did not have any internal threading bars with them this time and don’t seem to list them on their site, so I will wait until the next show for that item.

I then bought a bunch of items from Chronos as they happened to be the cheapest source I have found for these items.

A Boxford 2MT chuck adapter that I will machine down to a Mellor 1 1/4″-8 thread for use with my rotary table, or even in my lathe tailstock (£11.50).