123 block attachment kit - video

[mklotz]

I bought a set of these from Amazon. Here's a brief review...

The 5/16" OD dowels wouldn't slide into the holes in my 123 blocks. The interior of these import blocks is grotty at best so I reamed the holes with a small grind stone powered by a handheld Dremel. Better but still no go. My blocks are almost 40 years old so they may be dimensionally a tad different from those used by the manufacturer. I stuck them in the lathe and removed six thou from the OD and they slid in like deer guts on a glass door knob. (Isn't it wonderful to have a lathe in the house?)

Next, on the first assembly, I discovered that when everything was tightened, the dowels projected from the block holes a bit. As delivered, the dowels are 7/8" which is not quite short enough. This too may be due to my older blocks having different spacing than those to which the dowels were designed. Again, the lathe to the rescue. Took 0.1" off one end on each dowel. Now all the bits of the clamps are inside the blocks and the block assembly lies flat in any attitude, as it should.

OK, it was a bit of work to get the blocks and the clamps in working shape but, on the other hand, it's very gratifying to have the tools and skills to do jobs like that.