Yep, made one myself from an old jig-saw attachment to a drilling machine: Filing Machine
Was also lucky that someone sold new old stock of Vallorbe machine-files in small sizes and various cuts. I think I spent about 200€ on some ten years ago for the 240 (packs of ten) or so for this...
A die-filer would be a good choice, but I only know of one Swiss company that still makes them. Otherwise it would be a kit or an antique, second-hand machine, which is difficult to find.
Thanks, Jerry, I am indeed very well aware of the merits of quality tools. I tend to look into industrial suppliers and shun model hobby suppliers, as they thend to sell low-quality tools at elevated prices to ignorant model-builders. On the other hand, when you do things as a hobby, price is...
A modeller colleague in Australia is looking for a supplier for the above drill types. Any ideas and suggestion.
Thanks on behalf of this colleague !
P.S. Do not suggest to make the spade drills yourself, as he does not have the equipment to grind the points of drills down to 0.3 mm diameter.
Here you are, an image from a 1911 catalogue. Unfortunately, I only own one half of an orignal one ... it came to me in a box with odd lathe items many years ago. The face of it slightly dished.
Nice piece of tool-making.
In the old days there was a tool for this, consisting of two cork-hemispheres with metal fittings to provide two male centres. The crystal-blank would be wedged between the corks, the assembly run between two female centres and driven by a dog. I think they were sold...
I think the issue of rpms in turning is somewhat overrated and only really relevant in a production environment, where a specified surface quality has to be achieved in the shortest possible time. What is more important is the relationship between rpm and depth of cut. In our artisanal and hobby...
It seems that quite a few manufacturers of bench lathes made such attachments that drive the x-axis of the cross-slide through a universal shaft. Here is my own example from Lorch, Schmidt & Co.:
When cutting threads, I rather drive it through the hand-crank that I have added to the main...
I gather, if you touch up a hand-graver with a diamond-wheel, thrust-bearings would not a big deal. I had been envisaging more serious grinding of lathe tools with it, which puts both, axial and radial stresses to the grinding wheel.
Some 15 years ago I bought a bracelet cutting machine for exactly the same purpose, but then did not follow the project through, because I found its bearing arrangement not very convincing. There is no axial thrust bearing (which is not needed for the original purpose of the machine, of course)...
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