It should be obvious that good work can’t be expected of a lathe whose bearings or slideways are well worn, or that is not set up straight in all respects. “Straight” means particularly no twist in the bed and tailstock dead on centre. Once those factors are taken care of the other vital factor is properly ground and sharpened tools. A blunt or improperly ground or sharpened tool cannot cut smoothly and accurately. I mention this because of the boast I hear from tool makers and fitters and turners that they are able to grind tools accurately by hand. These are the guys that claim to be able to grind drill bits by hand. Well, it is not impossible to grind a drill bit by hand sufficiently to make it cut. Making it cut accurately and without wandering is another matter. Fact is, it is not possible to grind the angle exactly the same on both sides of the point or get the point dead to centre by hand and anyone who says he can is lying.

Lathe bits can also be ground by hand sufficiently to cut, but having tried it often I can tell you that each time you present the bit to the grinder the angle will be slightly different and you end up with a dozen different facets on the ground surface. Why anyone would want to do that when you can get it perfect with a simple jig beats me. Note that while you can get by hand grinding most tools the exception is threading tools. There are various thread included angles. BA is 47.5 deg, Whitworth 55, metric and US 60. If the tool is not accurately ground the thread it cuts will not be a proper fit to the female. Next time somebody boasts that he can grind 60 deg exactly ask him to draw a 60 deg angle on a sheet of paper freehand. The guy has yet to be born who can look at an angle whether on a sheet of paper or a lathe cutting tool and tell you for sure whether it is 59, 60 or 61 degrees.

I have just ground a 60 degree threading tool with a simple jig I made. I can’t guarantee that it is dead on with zero error if measured in a lab, but I am satisfied that is within a quarter degree each way because of the way I set it up. How you set things up is the secret of accurate work. For example, use templates. When I set the compound slide to cut a metric thread I set it with a template to feed 29.50 degrees in accordance with standard thread cutting practice. But I also set the tool in the toolpost to exactly 90 degrees to centre line with a template or engineer’s square, having first ensured that the point has been ground exactly 30 degrees each side not 29 and 31.

None of this is rocket science, in fact it couldn’t be simpler. Most amateur lathe users are like me, not into complex work like model steam locomotives. Most of us need to do simpler things like tools for gunsmithing or something of the sort, but still need to do accurate work. Why accept inaccurately ground tools out of sheer bloodymindedness when you can make them accurate with simple methods ?

Another simple thing to fix is those awful English and American tool posts that come with most lathes, but I’ll make that the topic of another posting.

via email :

Every time I try to reply it cuts me off. haha. At any rate here is the source for finding the book by Cleeve.

_http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&qi=7Gk5T.k80bwS,4aAcXbPqsdAmsk_
4812493540_1:38:1546&bq=author%3Dmartin%2520cleeve%26title%3Dscrew%2Dcutting%2
520in%2520the%2520lathe%2520workshop%2520practice_
(http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&qi=7Gk5T.k80bwS,4aAcXbPqsdAmsk_4812493540_1:38:1546&bq=aut
hor=martin%20cleeve&title=screw-cutting%20in%20the%20lathe%20workshop%20practi
ce)
I just ordered mine and it is on the way.
Humpy

You found one quickly, eh ! It is a British publication, one of the “Workshop Practice” series of books by Argus Books. It is detailed in the extreme and one could almost call it academic. Much of the content will not be of use to the average hobbyist. Cleeve earned his living making parts including lots of screws. It was making special screws in large batches that forced him to develop sophisticated techniques to speed and simplify the work. One of those was an automatic clutch that disengaged the lead screw at a predetermined position. That allowed cutting threads at 500RPM without running the tool into the shoulder. That is of no value to most of us but it saved him days of work when making a batch of two or three hundred screws six inches long. The real value of his book to we hobbyists is the detailed explanation of exactly how to best cut threads, an explanation I have seen nowhere else.

Perhaps the most interesting point is his condemnation of gearboxes. He says there are simpler ways of building rapid feed and threading settings into a lathe without the limitations imposed by the gearbox. Gearboxes are great, seductively so, for quick feed changes, as anyone who has battled with change wheels will know. But they actually limit the variety of threads that can be cut. Furthermore most (but not all) will cut threads only in the language of the leadscrew, ie either inch or metric but not both unless an expensive translation gear set is purchased. A simple change wheel set up if properly designed permits almost unlimited choice. My old Myford will cut every imperial thread pitch plus all the BA pitches, and practically every metric pitch to an error seldom worse than 1 in 1000 and mostly a lot better. For all practical purposes I can cut any thread.

Anyhow, it is a fabulous little book and essential reading for anyone who wants to cut threads properly. The other books in the series are all pretty good. I will list them if anyone is interested. One that is particularly good is “Drills Taps & Dies” by Tubal Cain. His “Work Holding in the Lathe” and Hardening Tempering & Heat Treatment” are also well worth having.

What do you guys think of spraying hammer finish paint on a rifle barrel instead of the traditional blueing job?

Bloody horrible, Brett, but I’m a traditionalist. If you want to paint it
for convenience there are various paint on/bake on finishes available in the
US as I’m sure you know. Try Brownells. There was a dark grey almost
black finish that baked on at 200C used in SA. Name of it escapes me right
now but I’ll check. Finish is a non-reflective semi matt sheen, quite
nice.

Cost of a blueing set up plus salts for one gun is quite high but not
necessarily prohibitive. A rifle barrel on it’s own can be blued in a slim
tank, not more than 75 wide x 100 deep. A piece of thin wall channel with
ends welded would do fine, and cheaper than getting one made up from sheet
steel. If you can make one from sheet so much the better. A single gas
heat source should be enough but a double electric hot plate will do nicely
for not much more than R100. Of course you need two tanks thus two heat
sources, so it does cost something. Last time I bought blueing salt it cost
R200 per can, and that’s more than you need for one barrel.

Of course it’s more viable for more than one gun and more viable for
handguns, not so much because of smaller tanks as because a single burner is
enough while barreled actions need long tanks and usually more than one
burner. Blueing is a service not widely available at a cost typically R600
last time I asked. I used to reckon that an individual could put together
a very simple set up for that money and that it would definitely be worth
doing his own for two guns. The learning experience alone is worth it.

I use my primitive blueing set up for blueing jigs and tools that I make.

I learned so much polishing and blueing a few guns that wasn’t in any of the
books that I started writing my own book, but abandoned it when I realised
there’s no market. If you feel like giving it a go I’ll send you what I
have. It’s easy, it’s the little hitches and glitches that cause the
headaches. You just need to know what those are.

[Originally posted to SATalkGuns -- Admin]