Bumping Around In The Garage

Spring time. Weather is getting warm. Still supposed to be isolated because of the virus. I found this:


Humm. How can I use it ?



An idea is forming...J.D.

 

Ah, you see where I'm going with this. Is yours the one sold by Carpy's here in So.Cal. ? I am thinking of putting it on my old Legend, so I am going to have to fabricate something.from scratch. The Legend has no front downtube. As for.the taps and dies, that is why I was rumaging around in my machinist chest. I don't have a lot, but I DO have the sizes I need. ...J.D.


The scrap shown measures .625" diameter. It is pretty mashed on both ends. Someone [me] was using if as a drift sometime in the past, but it will be put through the lathe anyhow. Maybe I"ll dig around tomorrow and see if I can find a better piece. It is getting late. ...JD.

 

Trouble with cheap taps & dies is breakage. [Breaking off a tap in your project piece really sucks.!] You get what you pay for. I just have bits and pieces. I don't use them enough to justify the expense of a set of metric and a set of SAE. This is one of those situations where tooling availability dictates design. ...J.D.

 

I bought that little oak machinist's chest from a company called Grizzly in the US . Try Grizzly.com. I think they are still in business. Just something.to keep my tooling for my lathe and drill in. I'll snap a couple of pics if I find some.time in the next few days. Just an old gearhead to the bone
[I.U.O.E. Local #501 Los Angeles, Ca. retired] …J.D.

 

I am blessed with a lot of space here. I bought this old place in 1988 when it was really cheap
[ property would be 2 or 3 times the price I paid back then]. I have a house, two garages, and a small shed/barn thing on the property. As for my lathe, it is a very small one, but I can turn out custom small bits. But yes, a guy has to look out for himself. ...J.D.

 

I found some time to go a little further on my light project. I decided not.to use round bar for a bracket. All I had was steel and I would rather use aluminum to keep it light weight. The light housing is also cast aluminum. I found a piece of aluminum flat bar over in the other shop. A little satin black paint and here is what I came up with. ...J.D.