I appreciate there isn`too much involved in making this but after a bin full of scrap recently, I needed something for my confidence! I decided to make a rear tool post for my cowells and do a decent job of it. These are £40 to buy from Cowells.
A kind chap on the yahoo group provided dimensions, I purchased a piece of 25mm square steel bar, slotted it and made a start!
Faced all the sides square, mainly to make it look nice! Got a decent finish but my machine vibrates too much and still leaves little hair marks.
Nothing much to it I know, but took my time and it looks nice!
Next thing was a tnut, 1/2inch wide but with something like only a 2 mm height at the sides. Was a little tricky but I seemed to get a decent finish again, rightly or wrongly with the big facemill.
I could have just locked it all down with a nut but I choose to make a handle. It unlocks and locks back on quicker than my qctp on my boxford! I must admit I want a qctp for the cowells and rather than trying to making one, I'm strongly considering just making lots of square tool holders with a similar lock down handle.
I wanted to give it a nice finish so tried to blue it. I've blue small pieces of steel before for clock and watch projects but nothing this big (still tiny I know!). Heated it with a blow torch and dunked it in car oil when it looked about right. I think in hindsight I left it a couple of seconds too long so I lost a little of the real deep blue but it still looks a good colour. Hard for my camera to pick out....
Then looking good on my cowells! Just need to buy a standard hss parting tool. I got one of those small one with a parting blade and it doesn't sit properly and sticks out the back too far!
