POLISHING ARBOR I made an arbor to polish piston pins and pilot bushings that can be chucked up in my lathe, or even in a drill chuck. First I cut off the head of a long carriage bolt. This one was 3/8” coarse and will fit in a small drill chuck. Then added a nut,...

BALANCING ACT I installed pulleys at the top of my 20-ton press. I ran cables from the bed up and over the top. I welded up the ends of 2 pieces of 4” square pipe to form 2 bucket which I loaded with enough lead tire weights to act as a counterbalance to the bed. Now...

CBN SHARPENING We sharpen our CBN bits in our mill using our diamond coated carbide valve seat tip sharpener. We hold the CBNs in a 1/2” collet and turn the mills head parallel to the table, then set the carbide sharpener on the mill table. You aren’t applying any...

What’s the Best Penetrant? A recent online article provided some information on various penetrating oils. A subjective test of all the popular penetrates with the control being the torque required to remove the nut from a “scientifically rusted” environment resulted...

FOR MORE THAN JUST ROTORS AND DRUMS Our brake lathe does not see as many rotors and drums as it once did but we are finding new uses for this great machine. With its large assortment of adapters and cones, it becomes a natural for mounting hard to hold parts for...

QUICK CHANGE HOLDER Many of our company’s jobs are short runs, with setups that needed to be changed sometimes every two to four hours. Work holding setup time was something that became necessary to improve as our volume of work increased. By investing in a...