I have been pretty busy building firewood totes and splitting wood, but with the temps in the 80’s, it gives me a good excuse to play in the basement. I started on my blast baffle the other day. I made a few cuts and drilled the center hole pilot. It seemed like regular mild steel. I grabbed one of my “pretty nice, not cheap” drill bits and it didn’t even try to cut it. It just squealed. Have to stick to the good hss lathe tooling. I have some nicer tooling that I inherited from my uncle. He was a machinist at a local paper mill. He built his own bench grinder and drill press, and I have both of them. I will try to get pictures as I go.
We spent the evening cleaning up part of the basement, moving some things and making more room so we could move the lathe. The headstock was close to a wall, so it had to be moved to the right to fit barreled actions. I made riser feet for it too. It was too low and I had to stoop a bit to run it, which made me very sore. I used hockey pucks and carriage bolts. I recessed the bottom of the pucks for the head of the bolt so it wouldn’t touch the floor. They raise it about 3.5” after leveling, which is about perfect. The feet prevent vibration transfer to the floor. It was pretty bad with the feet directly on the concrete. I worked on the blast baffle a little. I had to set up the steady rest, but the stainless likes to gall, so I will be adding bearings to prevent that. I prefer a roller rest for most things anyway and it’s something that needs to be done anyway. I’m also making a new boring bar that will reach through the suppressor tube.
The new boring bar was a bust, literally. I had a piece of steel laying in the shop that would work, so I chucked it up in the lathe and broke my parting blade. I don’t know what that stuff was or where it came from, but it does not like to be cut. Even carbide didn’t work on it. I tossed it in the scrap bin and ordered a couple of bars of the interweb. They should be here tonight and I can see if they do a good job. I did get the blast baffle done. The 304 cut like butter compared to that hard stuff. No complaints about it from me.
I tried out the boring bar tonight. Fiddled with it for a while on the part of the tube I had to trim off anyway. I got it dialed in, cut the tube off, and got right to work. The bar worked beautifully. I have not used insert tooling before. Only hss and brazed carbide. I prefer hss over brazed carbide for most stuff. This insert tooling is pretty slick. Each insert has 3 corners and 2 sides, so you get 6 corners to wear out on each one. I don’t know how long it will take to wear one out, but I guess I’m going to find out eventually. The tube is bored out to size and the blast baffle is a nice fit. A little tough to get back out, but once it goes together it will probably stay together. I have to thread the ends of the tube and make caps/baffles. It should move along quickly now, as long as I have the time to work on it. I still have to thread the barrel, but that won’t take long. It takes longer to get it running true than it does to cut the threads.
