Portable line boring

I mentioned this process once before here,I was wondering how some of you measure tool stickout accurately.
Mine is a Climax and has no pusher screw behind it.

I use a Climax setup also. Dad origionally bought it some 20 years ago. At some point in time he came up with a mike that will set on the bar and measure the protrusion of the bit. I can find out from him exactly what it was origionally designed for but it only works with the 1/4 shank bits, not the 3/8. That said at one point I think Clima made a tool specifically to use with their bars that did the same thing. Beyond that, when the mike won't work for whatever reason, I simply us the depth part of a standard caliper, set square against the shank of the bit, to get my measurement.

For larger bores we've made quite a few split collers that clamp to the bar and hold the bit. With them I simply take a cut and measure it for my hole diameter, without regard to the protrusion of the bit, until I get close to the final bore diameter. At that point I leave the bit alone and simply loosen the collar and ad shims of half the amount I want to take out of the hole under the side of the collar holding the bit. It works like a charm and eliminates any creep from the bit, etc that would screw up the final diameter of the hole, so it makes getting the hole accutately sized much easier than setting the bit height off the bar alone.

Something else I do when boring a hole is I use one of the chisel cut Sharpies to mark my bits. Once I get the initial protrusion and make a cut I mark the side of the bit where it meets the bar. With that mark in place I loosen the set screw and push the bit out until the mark is somewhere around the height off the bar of the cut amount I want to take.

Dad started boring back in the 80's and taught me all of these tricks, and I've been using them all myself for close to 14 years and they all work great and make the job alot easier.

If you're not using a boring head with graduations on it, you'll have to adjust the tool with a dial indicator

Thank you for the reply,
I have a 1.250 kwik way automotive bar mike that I use,this sounds like what you mentioned it works better than the big clumsy thing from climax. It gets iffy when you are doing press fit bushing etc. You have to hold everything in the SAME EXACT spot on the mike every time to get consistent.

The one I use is also one of the 1 1/4 bar setups, and now that you mention it I think Dad did say once that the mike came from a Kwick-Way setup. Given that he had one of those back then too, I'd just about guarantee you that's where it came from. Too, your right, with it you've got to be sitting in eactly the same spot every time to get an accurate measurement.

What style drive head does yours have? This one has the gearbox that's driven by a Milwalkee drill head. If this is what you've got, and you ever have trouble with it, (and haven't figured it out already)you can take a standard head and have the nose of the housing machined to fit the gearbox just like the factory one. Dad did that years ago so we'd have a spare motor to keep in the box after getting halfway through a job, in the middle of nowhere, and it crapping out on him.

Talking about press fit bushings, have you ever used any of the Connex spring bushings? The RR's track machinery repair shop turned us on to them years ago when we were doing alot of portable boring work for them. What they always had us do was bore the hole back overized and install a Connex to bring it back to the size they wanted. With them being a spring, you can bore the hole a little larger, or smaller to get the pin clearance you want. Because of that they are a bit forgiving as far as the fit goes when a few thousands over or under don't make alot of difference. Over the years I've used them with good luck
Connex

I use a dial indicator and mag base. If making a press fit,I usally pull the bar out and hone the last 3 to 5 thousands with a coarse hone. Makes a nice smooth finish for the press fit.

what kind of hone are you talking about?

THanks

what kind of hone are you talking about?

THanks

My unit is a 2020 about 15 yrs old,has the milwaukee drive motor.

Do you guys use a bore welder? I don't have enough work for it yet.

I have a couple of Aamco Cylinder hones. Heavy duty ones that can be ajusted and you can actually put some pressure on the stones they cut very well. Drive them with 1/2 in drill motor.Here is a picture of stick on a PC 220 Komatsu that I did, Just before presing bushings in.

Nah, I've always been the 'bore welder', LOL. For what they cost, like you, we've never had enough work to justify buying one. Too with the heads we've made we've done holes as large as 10 inches plus in diameter, with the largest being the top and bottom bushing holes in a 260 F/A scraper neck. Dad actually made a special setup to do those that included a 4 legged 'spider' to set in the middle of the neck to support the bar and stiffen it enough to do thart large of a hole. Granted when you get that big it's slow cutting as you can't hog into the material, but for the occasional hole it works just fine. I even made one some years back that allowed me to do a blind hole for the RR. In that case I made a setup that had two bearings inline with each other that I could weld to the base metal of the machine. The outer bearing was a smaller ID than the inner and I made a boring bar that had a 1 1/4 end for the drive head and a 1 1/2 end long enough to catch the through hole and the blind hole behind it. Again it was slow cutting and took a bit of time to do it but it saved customer a massive amount of money over what their other repair choice consisted of. That's the kind of 'impossible' jobs Dad and I have always tended to get asked to do. While I enjoy doing the run of the mill jobs that come my way I really like the challenging ones even more.