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Thread: Rusty the dividing head

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    Supporting Member thehomeengineer's Avatar
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    Rusty the dividing head

    Hi All
    This was a gift from a friend. He bought it on EBay really, cheap as it was in a terrible state of repair. How I ended up with the dividing head, he said it was too big and heavy for his machine and could not be bothered to relist on EBay and just wanted it out of his way.
    Therefore, I ended up putting under the bench not knowing what I was going to do with seized up rusty dividing head as I already have a great little Hoffman set up. One day they needed a dividing head a work for some manual machining so out comes Rusty a bit of diesel and gentle persuasive encouragement from a mallet we were in business.
    After using the dividing head, I could see the potential it could offer me at home being larger than the Hoffman and the opportunity to fit a D1-4 nosepiece so I could use all the tooling from the lathe 3-Jaw, 4-Jaw, collet chuck etc. So a full strip down clean and a new D1-4 nosepiece manufactured.
    The large indexing plate and handle was very cumbersome and the handle was stiff to operate and had evidence that it had been broken in the past and re-soldered up badly.
    A few years before getting this dividing head a had purchased a load of indexing plates at an auction which I was going to us on my rotary table (but never got around to it) So after a quick scout around the workshop I found them in an old cardboard box and decided these would be better. So new bushes and hand crank was manufactured and fitted.
    The bottom of the dividing head was flat so I machined a groove 5/8” wide 1/8” deep in the bottom parallel to main spindle, drilled, and tapped two holes to accept dogs to fit tee slot for quick alignment.
    The photos show the dividing head finished but unfortunately, I do not have any pre-refurbishment photos, but believe me it was a sad looking thing.

    Old indexing plate and crank handle
    Rusty the dividing head-img_0949.jpg

    D1-4 nosepiece
    Rusty the dividing head-img_0950.jpg

    New crank handle, bushes and the purchased indexing plate (I have a full set of plates)
    Rusty the dividing head-img_0947.jpg

    back view of dividing head
    Rusty the dividing head-img_0948.jpg

    Homemade square head spanner for locking D1-4 cams
    Rusty the dividing head-img_0951.jpg

    If you have got this far down the page I thank you for taking the time to view and read
    The Home Engineer

    186 More Best Homemade Tools eBook
    Last edited by thehomeengineer; Mar 10, 2018 at 02:40 PM.

  2. The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to thehomeengineer For This Useful Post:

    aphilipmarcou (Mar 8, 2018), Canobi (Mar 10, 2018), rossbotics (Mar 8, 2018), Seedtick (Mar 8, 2018)

  3. #2
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    Thanks thehomeengineer! We've added your Dividing Head Refurbishing to our Measuring and Marking category,
    as well as to your builder page: thehomeengineer's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:




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