OccupantRJ
Well-known member
Like many others, I keep too many irons in the fire, so have to work on projects as time allows. Sometime in the future, I will be restoring my Clausing lathe, so every chance I get, I am gathering and making tooling for it. One thing I did not have was a stop accessory for the cross slide. This attachment comes in handy for various operations, one of which is single point threading on the lathe. The stop allows one to come back to the original diameter setting each time a new pass is performed, without having to keep up with it on the cross slide dial. A piece of 3/4" CRS steel bar was used for the part, but since I did not have a 60 degree dovetail cutter in my hand, I simply positioned the part in the Bridgeport mill and used a thin slitting saw on a shop made arbor to cut the sloped cuts for the dovetail. The middle area was then milled vertically in the conventional manner, which left metal in the corners to be removed. Since I have a tool and cutter grinder in my shop at work, over a couple days at lunch I ground an old large diameter end mill to allow me to get the rest of the metal out of the corners. Since I had already slit the slopes of the dovetail, I only had to concentrate on the lower corners of the cutter to get the cutting action needed. the rest of the cutter shank was hand ground away to provide clearance for the shank while cutting. It wasn't a work of art as far as tooling goes, but it worked, and was free. A slotting saw was used for the pinch cut in the bar, and a socket head cap screw was used to provide the pinch needed to make the bar clamp onto the lathe's cross slide dovetail. A piece of threaded rod with a nut silver soldered to it was used for the adjustable stop screw.
