Milling a V-groove

if you can stand a 90 deg angle, just use an end mill and tilt the head or the work. For 60 or 45, use a dovetail cutter (and tilt the work or head)

Assuming you are using something like a Bridgeport to cut the grooves, you can either use an end mill, or a dove tail cutting end mill (if you don't want to tilt the head 45 degrees), or an arbor with a V shaped radial cutter like a heavy rotary saw blade. You can easily cut a groove and/or radius with a radial cutter, without tiling the Mill's head.

On Sun, 16 Aug 2009 09:04:30 -0700, the infamous "Steve Lusardi" scrawled the following:

Will these be flattened for use as a thumb rest, Frank?

Pre-amateur miller me agrees with Steve that a horz mill will work best in this case due to the angles involved. I don't recall seeing too many sharply angled vert mill cutters.

-- If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. -- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

This is a piece of cake with a horizontal mill and the appropriate cutter. Steve

Something like this: TinyURL.com/nyodas

I have seen them angled both ways.

[ ... ]

There are also some made to cut both sides of a 'V' at once. Or, you can mount a LH and a RH one face to face on an arbor to get your 'V' in a single pass.

Enjoy, DoN.

There are a variety of ways to do this including the ones mentioned above. If your father was an old time machinist, maybe he had metalworking shaper If you have one of these, it=92s easy to grind a single point tool bit to match the profile that you need and index the table manually to get the desired pattern. Here=92s a shaper in action to give you some idea of what they can do:

If you don=92t have a shaper, it could be an opportunity to acquire a new metalworking tool!

I don't see the original post, so I'll throw some comments in here.

You don't mention what the cuts are for, a secure thumb grip on the back of a blade, or to actually create a saw blade. I suppose there will be some heat treatment after all the machining and handcraft work has been completed.

A vertical mill can be used if the blade is held vertically, and then you would want to cut a single groove/notch, and then advance the Z axis to the next point for the next groove/cut.

For using a V cutter on a vertical mill, you could choose a shell arbor to hold the V cutter disk. If the grooved area to be cut is straight, you could utilize several V cutters combined with some precision spacers.

If the grooved area is an arc, you're probably limited to cutting one groove at a time, unless you could build (or have made) a custom tool from several different diameters of V cutters on a shell arbor.

A more method might involve drilling a line/series of small holes which would become the valleys of the grooved area. A die filer would be handy for the finishing work, and careful cutting on a bandsaw could be helpful in removing the bulk of the waste material. A cut-off abrasive disk could be a substitute for the bandsaw.

The drilling method would allow the notches/grooves to be arranged in convex arcs, if that would be desired. I've seen numerous knife blades where the thumb notches are along a convex arc.

If these are 90 degree Vees, you can tilt the head of many machines like a Bridgeport, and then do it with a conventional square-end end mill. If other than 90 degree, then you need a chamfering mill with that angle on the point.

Jon

I would tape a thin plate to the vise jaw at the proper angle to guide the blade and make a spring stop from an old hacksaw blade to index on the tooth just cut. If the blade and tang is too long for the vise, attach the angled guide to a thick upright plate and reclamp the blade after cutting each tooth. An endmill for 90 degrees or a dovetail cutter for 60 in a vertical mill should work well enough, especially if you saw out most of the notch first to reduce the workload on the cutter.

jsw

Or maybe a dovetail cutter which you can also tilt, to get less than

90 degrees.

Which would be much better than a chamfering mill. Chamfering end mills are made to cut on their sides, and don't do so well at the point.

An angle cutter mounted on an arbor in a horizontal mill would be ideal.

John Martin

Thanks for all the ideas. I have a mini mill. The head tilts so I can use a conventional end mill to cut these notches. I had a d'oh moment and this very simple solution didn't occur to me until several of you pointed it out.

Yes, these are going to be thumb rests/grips on the tang of a razor. I do not want to machine them fully, but I want the spacing to be absolutely regular, so I am just going to start them with the end mill. The finished notches will be shaped with needle files and such.

Thanks again, guys.

-Frank