A couple of weeks ago I posted about the little Craftsman/Atlas lathe my FIL gave me. Well, I am now making chips!!!!!!! Not big chips, not pretty chips, but chips none the less.....
I still have some adjusting to do on this little baby, but man, it sure is fun seeing a dull object suddenly get shiny as I zip a long.
When I came up from my basement shop, my beloved wifey wished me a Merry Christmas. I thought the dear woman had finally gone round the bend,but much to my surprise, my tee shirt was covered with "tinsel" and I looked like a Christmas tree. I had been turning a broken aluminum pulley and well you can guess the rest.
I also turned a shaft to fit a pulley I had laying around, chamfered and faced off the end of the shaft and drilled a 1/4 in hole in the center of the shaft......The finish on the turned portion of the shaft was,well nothing to be proud of, but I got it to the dimensions I wanted, so I guess was successful. The quality of my work was on par with tools from Harbor Freight, so it looks like I have a steep learning curve ahead of me.
Now, I think that the next thing I need to do is learn how to grind my tooling. I just grabbed a tool my FIL made 25 years ago and started having fun....
OH, and BTW, the shaft I turned tonight, was already hardened when I chucked it up... gotta get some differant steel.....
Greg