-
Improvised fly cutter
Back in days of yore a friend gave me a nice chunk of manzanita root. The color and character was intriguing and I determined to make a nice paper weight for my desk. I wanted a prismoidal, machined shape to contrast with the wildly convoluted fissures and vacancies in the wood.
At the time, I didn't have a mill and needed to machine it on a milling attachment on my lathe. I didn't have a fly cutter with sufficiently wide sweep and I didn't want to do multiple passes as that would leave minute discontinuities that would detract from the desired faceted stone appearance I was trying to achieve.
I decided to convert the faceplate on my lathe into a REALLY BIG FLY CUTTER. To this end, I took a bolt and drilled it through to accept a 3/16" HSS lathe tool bit. A setscrew in the bolt head locks the bit in place. Then, with some washers and a purpose-built nut, this tool was firmly attached using one of the slots on the faceplate.
With the lathe running in backgear at lowest speed, it worked beautifully though I will admit it took for-bloody-ever to carve out the paper weight shape shown in the photo. Not only is manzanita tough, the root, at least this one, is filled with embedded sand that does a great job of grinding HSS. I had to resharpen the bit many times before I was finished. It was worth it, though.
-
<!-- BEGIN /var/www/html/homemadetools/protected/modules/zeus/views/tool/postUpdate.php -->
Thanks mklotz! We've added your Fly Cutter to our Machining category,
as well as to your builder page: mklotz's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:
<div id="blocks">
<div class="block b1 pngfix">
<div class="bimg">
<div>
<a href="http://www.homemadetools.net/homemade-fly-cutter-33">
<img src="https://www.homemadetools.net/uploads/237765/homemade-fly-cutter-33.jpeg"/>
</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="head pngfix"></div>
<div class="left pngfix"></div>
<div class="right pngfix"></div>
<div class="blockover b1 pngfix">
<div class="title">
<a href="http://www.homemadetools.net/homemade-fly-cutter-33">Fly Cutter</a>
<span> by <a href="http://www.homemadetools.net/builder/mklotz_3">mklotz</a></span>
</div>
<div class="tags">tags:
<a href='http://www.homemadetools.net/tag/fly-cutter'>fly cutter</a> </div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<!-- END /var/www/html/homemadetools/protected/modules/zeus/views/tool/postUpdate.php -->
-
Interesting. One to filr in the memory bank. Thanks