Brass questions

Temporary if just needed while drilling: cyanoacrylate (Super Glue), cleave back apart with razor blade; hot-melt glue, heat to separate.

Permanent: epoxy, or solder or braze them.

Be careful heating the cyanoacrylates. They give off a wicked gas when overly warmed. Gentle heat I've been told keeps the toxic gases at bay. Don't over heat is the message I got.

I use the darn stuff often for small and delicate fixturing tasks. Hope this helps. Ian.

Double-stick scotch tape

They do that even when not warmed.

"Cyano" as in "cyanide".

--Can't be too bad; I grabbed it instead of a bottle of flux once by mistake; couldn't figure out why the solder wouldn't bond the two pieces for the longest time, until I realized it didn't smell like flux...

this is true. There is a fairly comprehensive document (thanks to our tax dollars) here:

talks about the hazards of it, and, it mentions that a biproduct of thermal breakdown is hydrogen cyanide. Also, don't forget that a bunch of the vapor IS glue...and it will plate out in a heartbeat on any sensitive tissues it can find. There is no way that coating one's airways with CA glue is good. And with that cheerful thought...let's go take a sledge hammer to a computer! (OMWC). Regards Dave Mundt

You should be able to sweat the disks together with solder, then heat to separate after finishing. I've used this a number of times for thin work that needed support while machining. There's no really easy way to remove the solder, though, afterwards other than by filing or sanding. In the items I was making, I had to file to finish them anyway, so a little solder on the surface didn't matter.

Another way to do it is to drill your holes on oversized blanks, make up a threaded arbor, put your blanks on, tighten up and turn the outsides to your desired size. Arbor is a close fit to your hole size. In my earlier pre-lathe days, I've done this trick with an electric drill, a file and a 1/4" bolt, washers and nut.

Stan