A spring loaded tap guide assures your tapped holes are straight when hand tapping. I have a 1/2" one from Fisher and it's always worked great. I decided to make a new one that directly fits into the Morse Taper 2 socket of my lathe for a few reasons: I should be able to get more point travel with a larger device, another tap follower would always be handy and that it would be fun project.
Sometimes you require tailstock support while turning an object, but for whatever reason lack or can't use a center hole. A Jacobs #100 armature chuck works well for small work, but for something bigger you really need a small lathe chuck attached to a live center. Bison makes a nice one but they tend to be rather expensive for a piece of tooling that is used very infrequently. How about a cheap 4 jaw chuck that just slips onto a live center?
Sometimes using a tool post mounted drill chuck is handy for drilling a deep hole as it's easier to use saddle movement to clear the chips. The trick is getting the crossfeed set correctly so the drill bit is exactly aligned with the spindle. Some of the tool post chucks for sale use an alignment pin held by the chuck, but I've made a simple alignment device that uses the tailstock so you don't have to disturb the work in the chuck.
Needed another item to get free shipping, so I bought a Edge Pro Mill Stop. These mill stops allow you setup work in the vise at exactly the same position for repetitive operations. I wanted the table version so I didn't lose any Y-axis travel. This stop was designed for the standard Bridgeport 5/8" T-Slots, but my mill uses the smaller 1/2" slots with 3/8" studs. It shouldn't be too hard to make it fit.
Made a crank adapter for the knee on the mill. This allows you to move the knee with a drill, in this case via a 3/4" hex. Basically a poor man's power feed. While you can get this type of adapter commercially, my mill doesn't follow the Bridgeport standard so it was DIY or nothing. On Frank Ford's website he presented a novel idea on how to cut the notches.
Last year I was finally able to score a nice used Criterion 2" boring head. Since I already had an import clone, I thought it would be interesting to compare. The boring head on the left is the USA-made Criterion DBL-202 and the one on the right is the imported 2" clone from Shars. Both are attached to an R8 adapter. I tried to align each at the R8 taper just to show that the Shar's head is a bit longer.
If you have one of those popular 20T hydraulic shop presses, you quickly realize what a pain-in-the-butt lifting and lowering the table can be. This press is usually located in a dark corner of a small room (actually an old horse stable) with limited access, so after I almost dropped one of the big arbor plates on my toe I decided it was time for an upgrade. So this summer I added a winch table lift to Big Orange.
Since I needed to roll the 4x6 drop saw into the main shop to cut quite a bit of metal for this summer's main fabrication project, I thought it was time to complete all the mods I wished to perform on this faithful tool. Some of the mods were performed a few years ago, like the drywall mud pan shavings catcher which actually works quite well. The big improvement this time was the folding work table for cutting in the vertical position.
If you make or repair stuff, it doesn't take long to amass quite a collection of small parts and hardware. While it can be quite satisfying to dig through your stash and find that needed item to finish a project, it can also be twice as discouraging to know you have it and can't find it. It sucks having to stop what you are doing and waste an hour going to the hardware store or wait days (or weeks) for a mail order to arrive.
For many years I've been watching Mr Pete's videos and always appreciated his little Cameron drill press. I do mostly model work and always thought the Cameron would be a handy tool. You can still buy one new, but they are quite pricey so I was on the hunt for something used. After a few years of getting outbid on Ebay, I was finally able to score a Cameron 164 Micro drill press for a decent price.