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When I was a teenager I worked as the teardown guy in a transmission shop one summer In the 60’s. No lifts for the R&R guys, they used large Lincoln floor and end lift jacks, creepers, and shop made jack stands. Forward 20 years into the 80’s and I was building a 1940 Ford pickup as a street...

Back around the early 80’s a friend and I were bemoaning the fact that he and I had no hydraulic shop press for our motorcycle repairs and such, so we got together and gathered up materials from a local metal scrap yard we frequented for the projects. 4 inch steel channel at 4.5 lbs per foot was...

I decided to improve chip control on my Bridgeport mill, so came up with this solution. I bought two 10x15” shallow baking pans from Walmart (gasp) and fitted the end of each pan with basically a sheet metal chute to direct chips into the pan as much as practical. Cardboard Aided Engineering was...

Just in case someone is wanting a scanner and so far has missed it In their email or text.

Since I use a bit of spray can paint on smaller objects I got tired of jerking cans for no personal satisfaction so I came up with something I have been thinking about making for years. I did some rpm testing on my metal lathe to determine a good speed. I went on to marketplace and purchased a...

I needed to drill a hole by hand relatively square into my Bridgeport table the other day so I broke out my old yard sale drill guide that I picked up quite a few years back. They work quite well for the purpose and also have an adjustable depth stop.

I was doing some valve work on the P218 Onan engine in my 318 John Deere and needed a valve spring compressor. Rusty welding clamps to the rescue! I machined a recess into the gripper plate to provide a positive grip on the valve spring retainer. It worked great.

I bought a Bridgeport 12” rotary table for $100 about 4 years ago, and as I had time I refurbished it a bit at a time. I knew it would be too heavy to manually wrestle onto the mill table, so I came up with a way to handle it when needed. There was already a cabinet in the corner by the mill so...

I don’t even remember where or how I acquired this Palmgren compound machine vise, it has been sitting on the floor in a corner of the shop for several years. I happened to spy it a couple weeks ago so decided that now is the time to perk it up and put it to use. I am going through my shop...

I had a blank area under my 4x8 welding table and felt that I would like a bit of tool storage in that spot. I searched on FB Marketplace for a couple of days and finally hit on the perfect solution for my needs. I bought a Husky brand tool chest with ball bearing drawer slides for $80 and...

I had a knee replacement recently and found this interesting picture in some literature. Wonder what the spec is?

I will just leave this here. I have no more words.....

On my 5914 Clausing lathe refurb, the plastic name badge had a broken end on it, so out came the 2-part epoxy. I made a small dam around the broken area after roughing up the end of the badge to allow the epoxy some bite to adhere. The epoxy was poured into the containment area and allowed to...

After restoring a vertical air compressor that I had, I needed to move it through a walk doorway into the back room of the shop. It is a rather top heavy unit, so I developed a special lifting/moving dolly to allow me to safely move it through the doorway, turn a hard right, then roll it down a...

My large blast cabinet is in a corner of the shop to keep it out of the way as much as possible, but I needed to be able to service it when needed. It is mounted in an angle steel frame to unitize the blast cabinet and the filter bag house required for it. The whole rig is around 8 feet in...

Does anyone here have a 5900 series metal lathe with the clutch option who is running a vfd? I am curious how the vfd handles the assumed amperage spike when the clutch is engaged to spin the chuck while the motor is already running. My unit has worked fine in testing using a static phase...

I am restoring an air compressor I had in use about 20 years ago that has been in storage ever since, to provide a backup compressor for blast cabinet use. I had acquired a 5 hp twin capacitor Baldor motor to replace the original motor on the unit, which I had “borrowed” for another project...

On my Clausing 5914 lathe refurbish, the rubber base pads were missing, so I researched the Shore hardness of several rubber items to make some new ones out of. I settled on hockey pucks at 91 Shore A and had to order them from Amazon as they are a rare item in the South. I had read of others...

In my machinery resto-mods I often need various hardware such as a key that the country boys call a “half moon key”, or properly, a woodruff key. I have used quite a few over the years, but at work had an assortment on hand to choose from. Now that I have retired, this was no longer the case...