Home made tools

I tried to get in contact with John Smith to get the input shaft to my SOS repaired the Smith way. I never got a response so I set out to do it myself. I bought a Harbour Freight 5" bench grinder and mounted it up-side-down on my lathe and surface ground the hex into the end of the shaft.
I welded a 1/4” plate to support the grinder and used the stud in the front to bend the plate in the back to take really small cuts. I am amazed it came out to within 0.0015" flat and parallel on all 6 sides. The socket fits almost too tight.
The headstock gears all had odd numbers teeth so I had to index the part using something else. So, I wrapped apiece of duct tape on the headstock drum, marked where it overlapped and cut it to length. I took it off the drum, laid it on the work bench and marked it with 6 lines. I wrapped it back on the drum and used a fine scale to line up the flats. Don't look too close at the welding, it is terrible.

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Good work, Catalina. Necessity is the mother of invention. It's nice to have all the tooling you need, but sometimes you still have to use what you got. I once ground a specialty reamer using a Dremel tool mounted to the compound. It wasn't fast, but the job was successful, and the customer was happy. unc
 
Stephen, I have a complete tool post grinder and a partial which could be made to work. What do you consider too expensive?
 
VERY impressive!!

Don't think I could have thought that up, even when my mind was working its best. Course, the only "welder" we had was a small spot welder. *lol*
 

Nice job! I have a tool post grinder my Dad made for our little 6" Atlas. A little 3" stone on a home made mandrel on a bent flat stock base driven by a little sewing machine motor and belted with a big O ring. Works okay for what it is!
 
(quoted from post at 12:45:01 01/19/19) Cover your ways and make sure you keep all grinding dust out of your lathe.
I kept it covered up the whole time. After I was done grinding, I cleaned and oil it up completely.
 

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