Success! Homebrew R8 spindle mill

Congrats! Pictures, we need pictures.
Lane

Did you make the spindle from scratch? If so, I'd be interested to hear the details on making the R8 socket. I'm working on making a new spindle to convert my Van Norman mill.
-JT
Statics wrote:

Yes, I used 1.5" dia 1/4 wall drawn tubing for the spindle. For the bearing set, I originally bought timken tapered roller bearings but to save time while I make a vertical spindle with them, just settled on buying mounted flange bearings from surplus center. I bought an xy table (6" by 19" working surface) online for about $100 and the rest I built.
Because an R8 shank is slightly under 1" dia, installing a short sleeve to bore in place will eliminate eccentricity and eliminate deep hole drilling/boring.
To clarify, I made the first cut with a boring bar mounted in an index head on the table. I will not get to bore the socket until monday. To cut the taper I'll just unbolt the table, remount at the proper angle and use the y to feed the boring bar.
I had an interesting time getting the drive pulley on the spindle shaft - I bored the hub to 0.001 shaft clearance before I welded it into the pulley. After welding it shrunk considerably because the body of the pulley prevented free expansion. Ugh. If I had it to do over again...
StaticsJason

What about the keyway?
Statics wrote:

Left it out for now. See the discussion on rcm a while back about running bridgeport size machines without them.
For my purposes, less than 1 hp transmitted 95% of the time, I will see how it runs without it. If it slips too much I think I may add a larger diameter sleeve around the spindle nose and bore it for the larger sizes of single angle collets. One of these days when I get time I am going to build a solid body s.a. collet chuck for the lathe. Might be nice to have tooling interchangeable between them with no loss of functionality (R8 in a lathe with no thru chuck capability? not for me).
If it ends up needing it I will locktite in a setscrew with the correct diameter dog point.
StaticsJason

For others considering a home built project, the following link is a source for a lot of new parts such as acme screws, R-8 spindles and bearings etc. We built our project partly from scratch and partly from manufactured parts. Our R-8 spindle cost us only 129.00 including bearings and we got new acme screws with nuts in left and right hand thread for 10.00 each.

That's the Shopmaster/Shoptask Users Group. I didn't see the link to the parts source. Can you be more specific?
Thanks, Bob