Milling some more soles *PICS*
woodburnbob
>I'm not especially proud of anything that happened today, but I took the week off and decided today I'd work on a few of the problem Baileys I have stacked up. I thought the first order of business was to put the soles right. It gave me a great chance to use my $200 WWI vintage mill (that sat rusting in the garage this winter). Here she is.
This winter I picked up this 8 insert face mill, so mounted it on a BS#9 shell mill holder and the put on a #10 to #9 sleeve so the whole works would fit the #10 mill spindle.
You're right, it's been awhile since I did this sort of thing and consequently I didn't bother to check whether the shell mill nut was tight (those 2 little holes in the middle). It was the last time I used it. I think.
Then from the back of the mill I slipped the draw bar through the spindle but couldn't get it to thread. What the hell. Let's see how it goes without a draw bar.
So I milled off 0.005" twice from the sole of an otherwise nice type 10 Bailey #4. This actually went so well I immediately took the #4 into the basement, draw filed the milled roughness off, sharpened the blade, and tried it on some wood. Wow! What a slam dunk.
With that kind of quick success I started whistling, lightened my step and picked up a #5 1/2. Out to the garage. Bolt it down on the mill table. Take off 0.004". No sweat. Why not crank up the speed and the feed. Half way down the sole the cutter holder left the spindle. Scarey but no big deal to a pro like me. I shut down the motor and slammed the holder back into the spindle. I messed with the draw bar again. What d'ya know. It would thread if you try hard enough.
Everything re-aligned and re-set. Engage the spindle and the feeds. The mill's working perfectly, really singing. For about 10 seconds. Then the milling head let out all kinds of bad noise and began shuddering like crazy. It was actually vibrating and bouncing. It really took me by surprise. I knew I needed to pull a lever or flip a switch but damned if I could think fast enough or get moving. Wow was it loud.
With everything shut down and a little inspection I noticed the cutter head was moving freely on the shell mill holder. Why? Because the nut unscrewed itself. The same nut that I'm sure I tightened last winter. Or, at least I should have.
Sadly, on this slight error, the poor #5 1/2 suffered bad (i.e. deep) gouging. Sort of artistic looking, but I went ahead and diligently took enough milling passes to remove it. How thin can a #5 1/2 be before it's a #20?
So I fixed that one. Time for one more. I found a crooked soled #6. Slapped it down on the mill. Lined it up really well. Milled it with no troubles. All done and no catastrophe! Unclamp it and notice the crack. Boy was that disappointing. Looked it over and gave it a good rap on the bench. Just took one rap to lop it off.
Looking at the drop piece, it turns out that half the crack was rusted and half clean. Yes, now I remember that #6. It's the fourth #6 I've bought and found cracked.
So here you see a customized, Italian sports car looking #6. I sharpened up the blade and messed around with it for 10 minutes. It actually has kind of a cool feel to it.
