Making scraping tools

[loply]

Hi folks,

9 months ago I started making a set of scraping tools. Just bloody finished 

I made an 18" straight parallel, a 14" master square, a 9" dovetail tool, and scraped/modified a 24" knife edge camelback. The parallel and the square are both accurate to about half a division on my 0.002mm indicator, ie to about half a tenth.

Here's some pics of the end result plus some pics of the process below:



Also made this nice plywood box for them, box took almost as long as the tools:







Couldn't resist stamping my name on the steel plate, the big straight edge just hangs and doesn't touch the carpet:



All this started by using a massive angle grinder to chop up this 70kg 18" x 12" x 12" milling cube I got off eBay for £30. Shows how long ago it was, that's snow on the ground:



Then I had to start machining the resultant lumps up:





Bit of blue paint, may as well try to hide the Dykem which will end up all over them:



And thus began the scraping process...



After some months I managed to snag a Biax for less then a mortgage payment, so the process sped up. The parallel and the small wedge I did by hand, but the square and the straight edge with the biax:



Now, the straight edge I bought off a bloke and it was 36" long. My surface plate is only 24". After realising the straight edge wasn't flat and needed a thorough rescrape, I took the decision to cut it down to 24":



The edges were filled with body filler and sanded smooth, this meant I could then spot the thing properly and got it rescraped to a high level.



The square is first scraped with both sides exactly parallel, then using an indicator you can figure out how vertical it sits, and rescrape the base to tilt it back or forth. In so far as my technique allows, I appear to have the square within about 0.001mm square between an inch or so from the bottom and top, which I was truly chuffed with.



Was almost disappointed when I used the master square to check my existing cheap ground square... and found it was dead on  Almost needn't have bothered making it!

And here's a small video of the straight edge as it was nearing completion:

Glad it's over with! Now I just need to use them to rescrape all 3 of my machines...  Well actually, you may notice I haven't yet scraped the knife edge on the camelback 

Rich

[awemawson]

Absolutely brilliant lateral thinking chopping up a milling cube, and you can be reasonably sure it has matured so shouldn't move.

What is the end objective - do you have a machine that you are re-scraping, our was it an objective in it's own right?

[vtsteam]

Super impressed! 


Really nice!

[doubleboost]

You have made a fantastic job of them 
John

[AussieJimG]

A great set of tools in a lovely box. And you were quite right to put your name and the date on it. It will be around for many years in lots of different (but appreciative) hands.

Jim

[loply]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the kind comments.

awemawson, actually the milling cube had quite a bit of internal stress, when I made the final bit of the cut it 'sprung' open a bit, much like steel box section does if you ever slit it lengthways, so there was quite a lot of rough scraping to do.

If it moves over time I'll simply scrape it. Good thing it took 9 months anyway, I'll say that was for "seasoning"

I was mainly motivated to make these tools when I discovered my surface grinder produced surfaces not flat in any direction! It needs a full rebuild, and my mill will get the treatment too before it's CNC conversion (probably in about 5 years time!), plus my lathe needs a bit of attention in places...

I also intend to use the remainder of the cube to make a couple of angle plates and other doo-dads from, which can be scraped and squared up using the master square.

[PekkaNF]

This is great effort and very inspirational. There are not that many purposeful castings of camelpacks and other scraping standards available most parts of the world. It is truly a great ideat to use something that might easier to obtain to make standards.

Very inspirational. I have made two attempts, but looks like I need some hands on training to get started. I haven't learn from the books only. I have a grinder too that I hope will produce somewhat straight geometries....let's see after I get all that muck out of it.

Pekka

[micktoon]

Very impressive indeed and top marks for making such good tools from an old tool  , the box is impressive too 

  Cheers Mick.

[Jonny]

Decent work there, used to be able to do it but lost the knack 20 yrs ago.

Ref the Lux mill, that's because the bed flexes and not rigid enough. Many a time thought I could see a droop.
Nice touch with power drill, seen how much the transfer boxes are £244 exc motor.