To the new and old members who want to rebuild your own machines

[Gard]

I was a member for awhile before posting anything because I consider myself more of a hobbyists than professional and thus did not want to violate my understanding of the rules. Everytime I have posted since then I have gotten valuable advice about my questions. Not everyone agrees with everyone's answers but its all educational. I very much enjoyed the Moore book I bought many years ago.

 

[Richard King]

I love the Moore book as there is a lot of info that is valuable. I just know I have had some students who were intimidated from it. My Dad past away and Kurt Mfg called me to rebuild some Moore Jig Bores. I had a Ukraine immigrant who was a great scraper but had never scraped a Jib Bore. (I have to tell you someday about how I hired him and how my men taught him swear words sometime, lol) I was running my company so I could not stay there all the time. His name was Symon and we nicknamed him Simy...Well anyway he didn't speak good English but he and I could look at something and we knew or were thinking the same thing....anyway I took my Moore book over to Kurt and Semy used the book to help scrape the machine.

They moved the machine out of the temperature controlled room where they had all their Jig Bores, Jig Grinders, (they have a vacuum that sucks up around the spindle and Devlieg Jig Mills so we didn't contaminate the room with scraping grit. They put us in the middle of their shop and on one end of the building was a outside door and in MN when you open a door when its 30 below zero you can feel the cold air 100' away when they opened the door. We could not hold the tight tolerances we needed in the bigger shop bay. So we had them build a room out of 2 x 4's and plastic sheets so we could control the temp. I was and am not knocking the Moore book, what I was trying to say that if your rebuilding your Bridgeport or South Bend Lathe as Jerry said you need not be that careful with Thermal this and that. There is a time and place for it as I just pointed out, but it's not something new scrapers need to worry about now. When you get better and you want to hold .00005" in 12" then you worry about it. I think I made my point and Thank You everyone for the stimulating chatter here. It was getting boring....lol

 

[IceCzar]

Last year a local company had an electrical "event" subsequently a VMC Mikron with a few blown boards showed up on Craigslist. I have a truly ancient Mikron 79 so it caught my attention. At which point I found out how far thermal and dampening engineering had advanced for high speed high precision machining. Alas I was a day late and a dollar short and likely better off because that would have been the deep end of the pool.

 

[Richard King]

Years ago before the internet, I put an ad in the Thomas Registers (a big set of green books that were like a yellow pages phone book for the whole USA) about my Rebuilding Training classes and I got a call from a one man crankshaft grinding shop in Clear Lake Iowa. He said he had a Van Norman Crank Grinder and wondered if I could teach him to scrape and we could rebuild his crank grinder? I said sure. Back then I was charging $100.00 p/h for training . I told him it would be approx. 2 weeks or $8000.00 or so (a quesstimate). He told me Jamison Rebuilders who specialized in rebuilding automotive machines had quoted him $25,000.00 labor plus parts to rebuild it.

So I drove down there and I taught him to scrape surface plate flatness in 2 1/2 days. He helped me lift my 8' camelback and scrape the bed, He helped with puling the spindles apart, etc. He was working in a 4 car garage. It was summer and one evening as we worked until dark. Anyway, I darn near had the bed scraped, it had a V and flat . I figured I had one more scrape and I would be done. Down there when it get dark the Mosquitos come out as we had his garage doors open (no temp controlled room). We started to get eaten alive so we left for the night.

We started at 8 AM the next day. I cleaned the bed and once again set the 8' camelback up on the bed and blued the bed, rubbed it back and forth a 1/2 dozen times and then hinged the SE (pivoted) it to check to see if it is flat. Standard practice when you scrape. When it's flat it should hinge or pivot at 30% from each end. Well shoot it was hinging in the middle a lot. At first I figured I must have not cleaned the bed off or it had a burr. So we lifted off the SE and I cleaned, stoned everything and re-blued the SE and lifted it up there again, same thing it hinged in the middle. Damn I was shocked as I knew the night before it hinged good ??? So we took off the straightedge and set it back on the horses where I stored it when not on the bed and got a cup of coffee and as I was sitting there drinking the coffee it dawned on me what was wrong, Have you figured it out yet??? What did I see?

The sun was shining in the widows on the east side of the building and onto my camelback. Daah...Thermal heat...lol.... That was enough to change the SE, the heat from the sun. I covered the windows with newspaper and that afternoon we checked the bed again and it checked good. That was a lesson learned. One has to be aware of your surroundings when scraping. An open door when it's cold out, where the sun is shining, where the heater is blowing hot air, where the AC unit is blowing cold air, etc.

I'm not knocking Thermal practice, I'm just telling you, don't get shook up about holding millionths when your scraping in your garage or basement on your Bridgeport. You have to be cautious but don't get super excited about using your millionth electronic indicator when scraping. "No scientific paper just 50+ years of experience".

 

[Richard King]

I have many more personal stories about temperature control and how it changes things. "No Scientific paper just 50+ years of experience". If you want more just ask. LOL

 

[eKretz]

Rich, you should start a new thread with just some of those interesting old stories. Many of them would probably have a lesson built in.

 

[Richard King]

Rich, you should start a new thread with just some of those interesting old stories. Many of them would probably have a lesson built in.

Everyone wants me to wrote a book. I have started one several times...PM is my book...lol

I'm out in Mechanicsburg PA now. Start teaching a class tomorrow. Today I was looking for BMY in York PA . It is about 30 minutes from here.. They are now BAE Systems. https://www.ydr.com/story/news/hist...22/linked-in-with-neat-york-count-4/31758875/

Back in 1971 my Dad got a contract with BMY to install - align and get a factories machines running that were sold to BMY by Midwestern Machinery in Minneapolis. The factory was in Masjid Soleyman, Iran. There were 3 of us that went. A rigger, my Dad and myself. I celebrated my 21st Birthday there. I thought I might see if BMY or BAE has a museum or something at their plant and I could visit it while I am out here. My hours here will be 7 to 2:30, so I could drive over after work. It would be cool seeing photo's and reading about the plant. I was there for 92 days. Yeah I could tell some stories .....lol...

 

[rmcphearson]

I'd like to hear from some of the newer and/or inexperienced guys to see if the more advanced discussions are actually scaring them off.


I'm inexperienced. Denis's experiment is way over my head so I've just skipped over it for now. Not scared off though.

 

[TedinNorfolk]

I just want to say there are some threads in here that are about the trade of machine rebuilding that make sense to the average Joe and then there are more complicated ones like the Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy and others dealing with thermal this and that.

If your thinking about starting to rebuild, scrape your surface plate or worn machines don't let that scare you thinking all that info is needed if you want to rebuild your machines in your garage, basement or shop. That info is important to some of the engineers on here, but you don't need to buy the Moore book. You should buy the Edward Connelly Book, Machine Tool Reconditioning, this book is what we call the "Bible" of rebuilding as it is a hard backed red book that looks like a hymnal and the George Schlesinger book "Testing Machine Tools" It has drawings of machines and the spec's new machine builders use. I have copies of both and the Moore book. I seldom look at the Moore book anymore. Most of my students never buy the Moore book. You can as it is aa really great book with color photo's. https://mooretool.com/publications.html

You do need to worry about temperature control. You want to have your shop heated to a constant temp so your tools and machines are not moving if the temp varies. If you are real interested in that subject the Moore book talks about that. If not just be careful not to have the sun shinning through a window and hitting one side of your machine and not the other. Or where your furnace or AC blows. Some very simple common since idea's.

I was talking to someone yesterday who was reading that Moore book thread and he said my God do I dare touch my machine? I said look at your worn machine it's worn .020" and if you can scrape it to within .002" Your so much better then before. No need to measure thermal creep and the like. That thread is for the engineers who have a lot of time on there hands. LOL See what I mean? Maybe Practical Machinist management should open a new category on Engineering Principals where the engineers can discuss that info, there is a forum called Metrology and that maybe a place they could write? Not here where average Joe can learn about reconditioning, painting your machine, rebuilding or scraping your machine like the great thread done by Gard.

Thanks Richard. I always enjoy reading your advice. I’m a self taught dabbler in scraping,but still find a bit of time spent on a really bad part of a machine can be well repaid. And I read about taking a bad surface down parallel with the original-I had wondered about that before.

 

[michiganbuck]

I think an oilway in iron old-school surface grinder re-scraped would likely be better than almost any new grinder one could buy.

 

[Richard King]

Next March I will be showing / teaching All World Machinery in Rosco, IL They import Japanese Okamoto Grinders . They make a great grinder in Japan. They want to learn to use the BIAX scraper to finish scrape it befoe the scoop hand scrape their final 2 passes to get their "signature" look.

 

[Adrien]

Any scraping classes planned or in the works for the 'public', as opposed to closed corporate events?

 

[Richard King]

I will be doing some in my Cottage Grove , Minnesota shop In April or May. I will post it in a week or so. Thanks. Rich