No time lately...

I've been positively swamped with work lately, so there's been no time for the lathe project. I did finally break down and order the Conelly book "Machine Tool Reconditioning". I keep hearing people talk about how hard this book is to get, but I just ordered it from Amazon.com marketplace and it came right in.

To the left is a real "made in England" hand scraper. It's a small one that I picked up very cheaply on eBay. There have been more of them since as well. I wanted to compare high-speed steel scraping to the carbide I have been doing. Just playing with it, it needs to be reshaped, since the curve it came with and the angle of the tip and very aggressive. I did some sharpening and it's looking like it does a nice job. It does get dull pretty quickly, though, as expected.

Below is my 18x24 surface place. Actually, it the new plate on the right and the one that arrived broken on the left. I put them both on a perfectly sized stand I picked up at a school auction for $1. I use the broken one for spotting and the good one for measuring. That way I'll never get any blue on the good one. That stuff does not come off very easily. I don't think it really matters to the function of the plate, though. I really want a single 18x24 surface plate. They are pretty cheap to buy, but the shipping costs more than the plate. I figure I'll keep an eye out for someone selling one here in Michigan, where machine tools are somewhat of a glut and I can just pick it up. Then I have to get it to the basement (it's close to 200 pounds).