Quote Originally Posted by tonyfoale View Post
Well worth a try. Also prompts the thought that maybe truck engines have suitable donor pins for a small square, you do not always need a large one. In fact I think that I have one laying around somewhere, I'll have to look it out and see what I can do. Thanks for the idea.
Absolutely - for instance bolted on a lathe faceplate or mill table if you're lacking a true angle plate,
or when your's just a tad too big for the current job, or even when you're making one yourself.
As per Howard Hall's excellent home page: Machining an Angle Plate or Cylindrical Square setups on the milling machine

When finding a few pins at the scrap yard, they'd easily be checked for wear by just putting them together against some light source.
Grinding/ honing the ends should be pretty straightforward, then roughly cutting them to suitable length -
no need to overdo that, as only the business end of it really needs to be absolutely true.
Personally I'd aim for max 6 to 8 in L/D ratio, as I don't want to push my luck too far.


Cheers
Johan