Vid-yo

Just a quick video from today. This is basically what I do all day right now... and yeah that is the sound of the motor. Imagine 4 of those going at once and that's what it's like. That's why I like to listen to tunes. It also helps me focus. I was just turning a cylinder at 3.00 mm for a tool. I have to do only half at a time since the tool rest isn't wide enough to cover the 20.00 mm long I wanted. It's sort of dumb but you get used to it I guess.

If you can't see the video from your RSS reader go to the actual website...

And here are a few more photo's from the recent projects.

Wait, wait

This is what I've been doing, this is what I've been doing...

I've basically been sitting in front of the lathe for the last 2 weeks straight and have gotten pretty decent at it. Just making some more tools.

This first one is a 3 toothed cutter. I have to finish the knurling part of it and also harden the steel. It is quite difficult to get those 3 little faces flat and even and to the right angles. Each end takes me a few days to complete. And of course there are tolerances to be aware of. All my measurements are within 2-3 hundredths of a millimeter.

This next one is a chamfering tool. I've done part of it but not enough worth taking pictures of.

This piece is a center punch. It's used to make a center point as a guide for when I drill into a piece.

This last one is a polishing tool. It's about 180mm x 6mm x 2mm and is tapered to 0.5mm at the point. Took me about 3 hours and one painful cut on the finger.

I'll post more pictures as I complete more on these projects...

New girlfriend

Last week I moved on to the turning part of the course. I was told when I started that I was to receive a new girlfriend. Now I am a little unimpressed with this since I wasn't ready to be dating and well, it's a mechanical lathe. I have to clean it and make sure it doesn't rust, and generally take care of it. Unfortunately it returns none of the favors, unless you count the work I can achieve using it. But I tell you it's just not the same...

So I decided to take a few pictures with my new gal, who shall remain unnamed at this point. Here is the first of I'm sure many pictures behind this "beauty":

The majority of this week consisted of using hand gravers to make perfect cylinders with the lathe. I am now capable of turning perfect cylinders accurate to within 1/100th of a millimeter. I've now moved on to making 4 more tools for watchmaking. They all are made of steel and I will have some pictures when I finish them. But for now, here's a picture of the start of a cylinder I was doing for practice:

Anyways, I will be doing this for more than a few weeks I'm sure so don't expect too many new and interesting things on the watchmaking front.

Random thought #2

- I don't understand the purpose of the line, "I don't need to drink to have fun." Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they've invented the lighter?