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.
With the QCGB and lead screw removed, removing the apron was a piece of cake: just remove the two cheesehead screws. Here's what it looked like. Oh, yeah... it's completely full of crap. And that folks is why South Bend touted the double-walled apron on their bigger lathes. It's a wonder it was still working at all, although I did have a problem with the half-nuts interlock which would need to be fixed.
Awhile ago I replaced the spindle felts, set the bearing clearance etc on my South Bend 10K. I intended to finish the rest of the lathe in a month or so, but now it's two years later! That's the trouble when you have a working lathe, you would just rather use it then do the maintenance, but now it's past time to finish the job that was started. It also didn't hurt that I made a pledge to myself not to put a DRO on the mill until the lathe is finished.
Once I had a dedicated toolbox just for the mill, it was time to make some holders for the mill tooling. Someone on Ebay is selling collet holders made out of 1/2" PVC sheet. If you paint it black and then machine it you get a nice contrast with the white PVC. Of course, where's the thrill in buying something already made? Unfortunately I don't have my table saw any more, so I had to cut the pieces with a saber saw and use the mill to clean-up the cuts.
Like most people, I'm always in need of more tool storage space, but it's gotten really bad since I bought the mill. Unfortunately the shop is 99.95% full, but somehow I managed to clear-out enough room for a Harbor Freight 18" end cabinet. I've had the Harbor Freight 44" Red Roller for a few years now and it's been a good toolbox. Of course, I don't have enough room to just hang the end cabinet off the 44" cabinet as intended, so I had to make a frame for some casters so it can be used as a stand-alone.