Myford Lever Action Tailstock Design and Build

[BazParticipant @baz89810]

An excellent job, if I wore a hat I would take it off to you!

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Posted by Baz on 21/03/2022 12:52:35:

An excellent job, if I wore a hat I would take it off to you!

Thanks Baz. No need to expose your cranium to sunstroke.

I served my time largely doing toolmaking such as automotive press dies, large and small. So final shaping of metal (tool steel) by hand finishing was a big part of it. Try shaping and matching the top and bottom halves of die for a station-wagon roof or even more complex, the floor pan! It's nice now after decades away from the trade to get back into it. Very calming with total focus and repetitive rhythms. It would be 40+ years since I did any die work.It's like living my second childhood! Funny how old tricks come back to you.   Will post a couple when I can upload some pics later.

Cheers mate.

Hopper

 

Edited By Hopper on 22/03/2022 02:14:19

[Neil LickfoldParticipant @neillickfold44316]

Been watching the build. Great to see. I mostly just make than document my home projects. The old days of shutting out tools is an almost lost art these days. Looks good too.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Posted by Neil Lickfold on 22/03/2022 09:07:16:

Been watching the build. Great to see. I mostly just make than document my home projects. The old days of shutting out tools is an almost lost art these days. Looks good too.

Thanks Neil. Yes indeed. I would suppose that stuff is all done with CNC machining to fine tolerances these days then microfinished. EDM machining has made huge differences on small dies too. I think we were the last of the generations that did it much by hand. Medium and large dies were roughed out on a profile mill that followed a fibreglass model from the pattern shop.But that left the die steel with ridges all along it like a comb where the half-inch diameter ball-nose cutter moved at quarter inch increments in striaght lines only, left the raised bits in between. That's what apprentices and die grinders and bearing blue were for!

You could spend literally months bedding in the top and bottom halves of a large die for a floorpan or roof etc set up in a press. Lying on your back grinding and rubstoning the upper die half was always fun. I dont remember being provided any kind of mechanics creeper to lie on or cushions etc. Just a bit of cardboard we scavenged out of a skip at the loading dock. Ouch. Couldn't do it now.

Then you'd put a test panel through it and it would rip the sheetmetal in half if the clearance between the two halves was a thou or two too tight, or you would have big wrinkles in the panel if clearance was a thou or three too much. So back to lying on your back eating grinding dust again. And if a radius had even the tiniest edge where it blended with a flat, the metal would always tear rather than flow over it.

Fun times!

Edited By Hopper on 22/03/2022 10:53:59

Edited By Hopper on 22/03/2022 11:02:07

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

OK here are those couple of little toolmakers tricks I promised Baz. This was for final shaping of the small quill clamp. Made from aluminium so easy peasy.

First one was with small complex shaped piece like this, you want to be able to get around it quickly and file it at all sorts of odd angles without having to be a contortionist. You work much better when you are comfortable and the small section you are working on is relatively level and square to how your arm strokes back and forth with the file. So you bolt the small job to a piece of stock of some sort so you can hold the stock in the vice and move it around at all sorts of odd angles to hold the job just where you want it. This also means the vice jaws are not blocking access to the job too. You can move around the job very quickly like that.

I used a bit of scrap threaded rod and a locknut screwed into the existing tapped hole in the job:

The other trick is using riffler files. They are a set of curved files. Some are flat, some are round, some are diamond shape in profile. They curve lengthways so one side is used for inside radiuses and the other for outside. Some are curved on the outside of the file, and flat on the inside, others are curved on both. So you can file compound curves and simple curves. They made quick work off all those compound curves on the inside corners where I could not get with the belt linisher. In fact, I had a series of gashes on some curves from roughing them out on the edge of the belt. Rough as guts!

Using the concave curved side of the file, with rounded cross section blade, to file the convex compound curve on this section:

Using the convex curved side of the file to smooth out the concave compound curve on this section.

The rifflers made very quick work of it. Then, being soft aluminium, final finish with coarse emery tape was a doddle.

A lick of paint covers many sins, and reveals a few more than might need a final finishing touch, if I get that fussy!

The clamping slot was finished by hacksaw and warding file (a very thin coarse flat file about 8" long) as the final step pre-painting.

Painting in 85 per cent humidity at 90F is always fun. Paint will sit there tacky for day after day. The advantages of being a single guy are few, but one is you have full access to the oven at all times. Half an hour at 150C and then leave it in there to cool off slowly works wonders.

And that night, my dinner did not taste like paint!

[geoff walker 1Participant @geoffwalker1]

Hi Pete,

I recall a comment you made some years ago, " it's amazing what you find inside a block of metal".

nice work mate, I have followed this thread with real interest.

……..and I'll tell you something, you will not regret making a lever tailstock attachment.

Had mine 11 years, would not be without it.

Geoff

[geoff walker 1Participant @geoffwalker1]

Hi Pete,

I recall a comment you made some years ago, " it's amazing what you find inside a block of metal".

nice work mate, I have followed this thread with real interest.

……..and I'll tell you something, you will not regret making a lever tailstock attachment.

Had mine 11 years, would not be without it.

Geoff

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Thanks Geoff. Glad you are finding my scratching about of interest. It would have been a lot easier if I could get a set of those nice M Type castings to adapt! But shipping costs have gone totally crazy. Would be 60 quid or so. So needs must. Yes it is still amazing what lurks inside innocent blocks of metal resting peacefully in the scrap box.

Good to hear from you again. You must come back and visit Cairns again sometime — but the coral is all bleaching badly right now with the increasingly hot summer this year, so not so good for you divers. But I have an air conditioner in my shed now so it's a year-round operation. Hence this summer project on the tailstock attcht.

Pete

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

No material progress today. Another rest day. But I did call into the local steel merchant looking for an offcut of 1" plate to make the rather complex shaped handle end that looks like the below pic. But the local family firm has been taken over by a multinational and they no longer have the staff to sell offcuts to the public. So they are throwing them in a skip for sending away to the scrap metal yard. Doh! All I have to do now is locate the skip…

While I was there I bought the last of their stock of 3/8" round Bright Mild Steel bar as they are going all metric now. Cost me, get this, for 4 metres of 3/8" BMS round, $57. That is about 29 Quid. No wonder I usually make my stuff out of the scrap bin or scungy black bar that machines like carp.

Thanks again to Noel Shelley for sending me the final dimension I needed to make the handle. So now I am working on how to make this triangular shaped handle bracket below

It is a mongrel complex shape with a hard for me to mill 6mm slot in it for the link and round pinch clamp for the handle itself and a step where the pivot bolt goes. I couild carve it from a piece of 1" plate, but I only have 3/4".

So I am looking at either making it from two pieces of 1" square bar I have in the scrap box and then welding the two pieces together. One piece would have the two pivot bolts in it. The other the handle clamp with smaller pinch bolt.

OR keep it a lot simpler and make the earlier type straight handle. Only modify the pivot bolt positions from the early 3" centre distance to the above 1-5/8" for more leverage and more sensitivity. That would be a lot easier to make. I could just use a length of 3/4" square bar, which I have, with a lug welded on for the second pivot bolt and ahole drilled in it for the handle to fit into with a grub screw. Disadvantage would be the handle can not be slid in out of the way liek in the above later version.

Decisions decisions. I think I will leave that bit to last and mock it all up on the lathe and see which I prefer.

Meanwhile will get on with the little flat link and the three very special shouldered pivot bolts. Will have to mill my own BS hexagons on them so an interesting little exercise in the lathe.

Manyana.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

A small job today. Marked out and made the small link that goes from the tailstock body clamp to the handle. It was just a piece of 6mm x 20mm flat bar from the scrap box. Rounded the ends on the belt linisher's sanding disc.

Then because I can't trust my Chinese drill press to drill straight at the moment, and can't from experience doing the body, trust my Chinese chucking reamer's cutting edges to run true to the shank, I drilled and reamed the two pivot holes in the lathe. At least the reamer was not spinning around 10 or 20 thou off centre this way. Seemed to follow the drilled hole ok so should be good. I will make the pin to fit the hole, whatever size it turned out to be anyway.

I found that my recently made carriage stop is very handy for this work. I set it so the carriage could not get close enough to those bolts sticking out from the faceplate to get hit. Always a worry and easy to forget about in the heat of battle. The stop makes it a no-brainer.

And then something I have never done before: oil blacking. Heated the link up black/blue hot with the propane torch and dunked it in some leftover engine oil. It came up ok but I think it would have been blacker if I could have heated it up a bit more. I would like it as black as Eric Olthwaite's mother's black pudding: "So black even white bits were black". I don't have any firebricks so could not make a little hearth to build up the heat. Not many fireplaces or central heating boilers in the tropics so nobody stocks firebricks.

So that were that done. We are heading toward the home stretch now. A dig around in the scrap box found some bits of 3/4 and 1" square and plate waiting patiently for the inner shapes to be liberated. Still on the drawing board and looking at net pics to decide whether to use two pieces welded together or carve it all out of one piece of plate. That's tomorrow's job.

 

Edited By Hopper on 24/03/2022 11:07:26

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

PS and here is a little trick I thought to share while marking out today, given current discussion of steel rules in another thread.

When laying out with a rule, the most accurate way is using dividers. Don't use the end of the rule, it can be worn or mismanufactured and give a wrong reading. Start at the 1 or 2 inch mark instead. And don't do it by sight. Do it by feel. You can feel the point of the divider very definitely drop into the graved line on a good rule. So when the dividers are properly set, you can feel both points "click" into the graved lines very definitely.

The lines on the ruler, a good one like this ancient Moore and Wright that has always been kept in my layout toolbox for "best", are probably made withing a thou or so. So your dividers can be set to exactly the same. You then use them to step off distance on the layout, rather than just ruler and scriber, which introduces several errors including parralex and ruler movement and generally just missing the mark with the scriber.

Similarly when prick punching the intersection of two lines, don't site the point of the punch by eye. Do it by feel. You can feel the point drop into a finely scribed line. Then drag the point along the line until you feel it "click" into the intersecting line. You can feel when the point is in the right position. It will not move in either direction under light pressure.

Beware though, if you scribe your lines too deeply, they will have a tall raised ridge along each side of the V groove. You can be fooled into thinking the point is in the groove when it hits the ridge. But it needs to go that two thou more up over the ridge and down into the groove, so second click. Same when you drag it along to feel the intersecting line.

As a scribed line is about 2 thou wide, you can achieve a good level of accuracy if you use the dividers to get it in the right place to start with then the prick punch "click" method to get your punch marks on the line. Theoretically within two thou really. Then when you mill, or hacksaw or file to "split the line" you are within a thou! In theory.

[Dave WoottonParticipant @davewootton]

Excellent tips Hopper and very well put, just about sums up all the good advice given to me by Jim who taught me bench work. The point about not scribing too deeply is one that he laboured, but I've never seen it in print before. Jim seemed about a hundred years old when I was an apprentice and I only recently realised he was younger than I am now!

Watching this build log with interest still, keep up the good work.

Dave

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Posted by Dave Wootton on 24/03/2022 12:59:53:

Excellent tips Hopper and very well put, just about sums up all the good advice given to me by Jim who taught me bench work. The point about not scribing too deeply is one that he laboured, but I've never seen it in print before. Jim seemed about a hundred years old when I was an apprentice and I only recently realised he was younger than I am now!

Watching this build log with interest still, keep up the good work.

Dave

Thanks Dave.

Yes funny how you remember both these old tricks and the old boys who taught them to you. I am the same. I can tell you exactly who told me what. Remember it clear as a bell. In the Swingin' Seventies of the youth rebellion against the older generation, those old boys seemed to be above all that and were held in high regard by pimple faced yoofs.

And funny when you think that now we are older than those old boys were at the time. I recently realised that our mentors aged say 60 in 1975, would have been born circa 1915 and started their apprenticeships circa 1930. So their 60 year old mentors would have been born in like 1870 and started their apprenticeships in 1885. The height of the steam engine era. So we were being told these kinds of things by guys who had been told them by the original living relics of the Industrial Revolution.

That connection and many of these little tricks will be lost when our generation is gone as there are precious few apprentices these days.

But does it matter? China has built up the world's biggest manufacturing industry from scratch without such hand-me-down traditions. But the quality levels of much of their machining and final hand fitting are not yet up to the standards of Rolls Royce et al, or even of Myford, Raglan, Boxford and co. Time will tell.

[Dave WoottonParticipant @davewootton]

Very true about the memories, bit off topic but a box was recently unearthed that has been in store since my parents house was cleared years ago, in it were many parts I made at work for LBSC's Miss Ten to Eight locomotive. Part of it was a finished crank axle, loctited together and pinned,I had forgotten the box's existence and it was a real surprise when it was opened. But on seeing the axle I can now remember clearly the conversation I was having with my mentor Jim while setting it up on a surface plate for loctiting as if it were yesterday. until a month or so ago the box had been unopened since the firm closed and we were all made redundant, this was August 1979! 43 years ago.

Yet I have to have a picture of my cars licence plate on my phone as I cannot for the life of me remember it!

Or where I left the keys to it.

Dave

Edited By Dave Wootton on 25/03/2022 09:22:30

Edited By Dave Wootton on 25/03/2022 09:31:08

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Lol glad to hear I am not the only carries a phone pic of his car number plate!

So are you going to finish that Miss Ten to Eight now you have it again?

 

Edited By Hopper on 25/03/2022 10:03:51

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Anyhow, twas a day of watching the paint dry today. Got the first topcoat on over the primer. The rain has stopped so the humidity is a crisp 70 per cent so it might even be dry by tomorrow. Otherwise it will have to go in the oven. Not sure if a second coat would stick to already baked paint though. Painting really is not my thing. I do know from bitter experience though that if I spray a second coat onto still even slightly tacky paint, it will wrinkle up and do all kinds of weird things.

I used a tiny leftover bit in a spray can from when I restored the lathe some years back. It is industrial machine paint I had mixed up locally. Some website said RAL 7011 was the correct paint code. But it's not. It's a bit darker than true Myford grey. But what the heck, it's a bloody old lathe not a 1923 Lagonda.

So pottered around trying to work out the exact geometry to make the handle so it gives a full range of movement and does not foul the tailstock. Bit hard with a cardboard template and a bit of old flat bar. But I think I will definitely make the later type lever with the sliding handle. Otherwise it could be a bit in the way, right where I reach for my drill bits, tool bits and mikes etc to the right of the lathe.

So I will draw it up best I can from internet pics and the critical pivot pin locations Noel sent me and wait until I can bolt the actual units in place and make the handle final fit to the real thing. I think I will go one step further than Myford and add a spring loaded ball bearing in the bracket to act as a detente on the sliding handle. Put a couple of grooves in the handle to hold it in position at full extension and half mast. That might be rather handy and do away with the need to tighten/loosen the clamping pinch bolt every time I want to slide the handle in or out. Something to sleep on….

[Dave WoottonParticipant @davewootton]

Posted by Hopper on 25/03/2022 10:03:11:

Lol glad to hear I am not the only carries a phone pic of his car number plate!

So are you going to finish that Miss Ten to Eight now you have it again?

Edited By Hopper on 25/03/2022 10:03:51

Afraid so hopper, was under the impression that castings and drawings would be hard to find as it's not an engine seen very much. However they are still sold by Kennions so a set of drawings and some very nice hornblock castings arrived last week, so it looks like another project joins the others. I had coated everything with Shell Ensis fluid which has done a superb job but after forty years is taking some shifting there's a very stinky soup of petrol and white spirit softening it up at present. Some of the smaller bits were in brown paper envelopes and they have rusted beyond salvation, presumably the acid in the paper,, and the original blueprints looked like the dead sea scrolls! I'll post some pictures and start a thread when it's all cleaned up, sorry if I'm hijacking yours!

Tailstock lever coming on a treat

Dave

[David-Clark 1Participant @david-clark1]

Now why did I not think to photograph my car number plate? Doh.

To late now, no more car.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Not a lot of shed time this week. Resting up a bit. But actually did a small bit of machining, at last.

Using the three jaw chuck, I mounted up a peice of 3/4" plate that will become the handle bracket pseudo-casting. I faced a good 1/8" off one edge of it, partly so I have a good flat reference surface for the marking out of a quite complex shape. But also to get rid of any hard skin that black hot rolled plate like this seems to have. That was how i snapped the 6mm slot drill on the main tailstock body clamp. It was fine until just breaking through the surface on the other side. Hopefully this will get rid of any "skin" and give the remaining slot drill a chance to sail through it without dramas. The three-jaw works just fine for this kind of thing, in the absence of a milling machine. The centre "pip" is a bit off centre but no big deal in this instance. Interrupted cut is interrupted cut regardless. So steady steady wins the day.

So I have decided to bite the bullet and make the far more complex later/Super 7 type handle set up. First thing was a rough drawing I made up from measuring 'Net pictures on screen and a couple of essential dimensions, thanks again Noel.

Edited By Hopper on 31/03/2022 08:51:55

Edited By Hopper on 31/03/2022 08:52:55

Edited By Hopper on 31/03/2022 08:54:00

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

The drawing was scanned and a printed copy glued to a piece of Corn Flakes box and cut out with scissors. And lo and behold what materialised from the scrap box, awaiting its fifteen minutes of fame: a piece of 3/4" plate just the right size and shape! Magic.

 

The Corn Flake box prototype was tried out on the assembly in situ as "proof of concept". It looks like my interpretation of the net photos was spot on. The handle just clears the clamp on the fully extended position, allowing maximum quill movement of about 2-1/2" or so.

The long handle, a piece of 1/2" or 12mm BMS will go through the hole shown by the dotted line on the Corn Flakes special. That's CAD — Corn-flakes Assisted Drafting.

And what would CAD be without a variety of viewpoints to make sure it worked from all angles?

 

And fully retracted, which is where most of the work will be done I am sure. I like the idea of being able to slide the handle back in out of they way of the adjoining bench as room is a bit tight and traffic a bit heavy right there. I might even add a GHT style ball handle to make the handle pinch bolt quick action, and maybe a spring loaded ball bearing detente…

The finished shape is more complex than the CAD model lets on. There is a 6mm slot to be milled where the link fits, a recess to be milled where it joins onto the quill clamp, to let the pivot pivot, and a slit to be cut on the handle clamp so the pinch bolt can pinch. This will actually be the most challenging part of the whole thing to make.

So the 3/4" plate has been cleaned up and given a coat of Hopper's Patented Marking Red. Once that has dried in the next day or two, the fun shall begin.

Edited By Hopper on 31/03/2022 08:56:38

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

Hey Hopper ! I think you may find using 12mm or 1/2" as your lever may be toooo thin ! The original was 9/16" and seemed ok but 12mm, no ! Your work looks very good. Best wishes Noel.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Posted by noel shelley on 31/03/2022 09:46:55:

Hey Hopper ! I think you may find using 12mm or 1/2" as your lever may be toooo thin ! The original was 9/16" and seemed ok but 12mm, no ! Your work looks very good. Best wishes Noel.

Thanks Noel. Yeah, I looked into that. But all I have in stock is 1/2" and 12mm round, and the plate I am making the bracket out of is only 3/4" thick, not 1" which is what I guesstimate the original to be, so wall thickness would be getting down on that.

I doubt that my mighty biceps will significantly bend a piece of 1/2" round steel bar a foot long to any permanent degree. The levers on my drill press are only about 3/8 or 5/16 or so and don't flex under bicep pressure at all.

If it turns out to be a problem, I can either bore out the bracket and fit 9/16 later or scrounge up a bit of 1/2" or so diameter chrome-moly round bar out of the centre of a 4WD utility truck shock absorber. Every mechanic shop around here has a skip full of them out the back. And I know I won't bend that stuff. They are tough.

Which brings to mind the ball that goes on the end of the handle. Looks in some pics like it would be 1-1/2" diameter, in others maybe a little smaller. And some pics seem to show a taper on the lever leading up to the ball. I will probably order a bag of five 38mm (1-1/2" ) black plastic machine knob balls off eBay for peanuts. .But they will have to come from Hong Kong and there is a two month imports backlog at Customs due to Covid. We are sort of at the peak of the Covid wave right now that the UK went through some months back.

So in the meantime will turn something up out of some 38mm aluminium bar I have. If my homemade ball turning tool will stretch that large. It was made to do the ball handles on the GH Thomas dividing head so not sure how big I made the max capacity. Otherwise, it will be an interesting job to turn the ball freehand and finish with a file,or a piece of 1-1/2" pipe sharpened to a cutting edge at one end that can be worked over the rough turned ball to make it truly spherical. I've always wanted to try that. I have a bit of 1-1/2" motorbike exhaust pipe leftover that would be perfect.

IN the long run though, I reckon the plastic knob wold be a bit easier on the hand than ally. I have a 1" plastic ball on the Myford carriage lock handle I made and you can really smack those things without pain. I like that.

Edited By Hopper on 31/03/2022 11:08:21

Edited By Hopper on 31/03/2022 11:10:02

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Posted by David-Clark 1 on 25/03/2022 18:04:52:

Now why did I not think to photograph my car number plate? Doh.

To late now, no more car.

Problem solved then!

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Posted by Dave Wootton on 25/03/2022 11:44:14:

Posted by Hopper on 25/03/2022 10:03:11:

Lol glad to hear I am not the only carries a phone pic of his car number plate!

So are you going to finish that Miss Ten to Eight now you have it again?

Edited By Hopper on 25/03/2022 10:03:51

Afraid so hopper, was under the impression that castings and drawings would be hard to find as it's not an engine seen very much. However they are still sold by Kennions so a set of drawings and some very nice hornblock castings arrived last week, so it looks like another project joins the others. I had coated everything with Shell Ensis fluid which has done a superb job but after forty years is taking some shifting there's a very stinky soup of petrol and white spirit softening it up at present. Some of the smaller bits were in brown paper envelopes and they have rusted beyond salvation, presumably the acid in the paper,, and the original blueprints looked like the dead sea scrolls! I'll post some pictures and start a thread when it's all cleaned up, sorry if I'm hijacking yours!

Tailstock lever coming on a treat

Dave

No worries Dave. Looking forward to seeing it.

[Neil LickfoldParticipant @neillickfold44316]

Hopper, You could make the handle with a female thread from your 3/4 stock that you have and make the thread on the end 12mm Male or bigger. The Original handle of the Myford one is ok for the intended light work, but is a bit flexy feeling if you were drill a 1/2 inch hole into something tougher than mild steel. A more beefy handle would be of a real benefit, although not in keeping with the original. Reminds me that I should get that round tuit out and make the heavier section handle myself. I'm just weighing up the easy option of heavier rod diameter, or going the flat plate shaped handle. Both being deviations from original. Cardboard design has a lot of practicalities, along with 3d printing test assemblies of parts too.

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