Gloriously Inconsequential

Rob Siegel is an automotive writer that goes by the self-chosen appellation "The Hack Mechanic," and he is a funny guy as well as a good mechanic. In a recent column in Roundel, the magazine of the BMW Car Club of America, Siegel got philosophical for a bit, and explored the reasons that car people, as well as other hobbyists, get so passionate and consumed with their hobbies. One reason is that the decisions involved can be "gloriously inconsequential" - they can consume a lot of time and energy (all of it fun in some way) but the decisions have no real bearing on real life.

Today I got a rare full day in the shop at Grant Street, and did some work on something that certainly qualifies as inconsequential, glorious or not. In addition to the shop full of tools at Grant Street, I maintain something I've started calling The Corner Machine Shop, because it occupies a corner in our garage at home:

This is a space where I can play for just a few minutes without leaving home. A typical time would be when Mary Ellen wants to watch a Hallmark movie. I happily leave her to it, and go play in the garage!

The first component of The Corner Machine Shop was actually bought a couple of years ago on Craigslist: a Sherline lathe. This is a very capable, very accurate metalworking lathe that hobbyists use to make the most detailed and sophisticated models. I was pleased to find it locally for less than half the new cost, complete with lots of extras:

I added the base. It's sized around a standard 12" X 18" cookie sheet, which catches the metal "swarf" and slides out for easy cleanup. That's a clear plexiglass panel behind it, and out of the frame is a built-in LED work light.

So, what do I do with it? Mostly, I make little brass and aluminum pieces that I use in presentations for Make717, our local maker's group. I take either this lathe or a slightly larger Sherline from the makerspace, and demonstrate metalworking at local libraries and schools. Here's an example of some fancy screwdrivers I made on the lathe for Cor Engelen, to thank him for helping me convert Beck TD to disc brakes:

Like every Sherline owner, I have also enjoyed modifying it to make it even better. I added a quick change tool post from A2Z (now out of business), and later added an ugly but effective stiffening block at the rear to keep it from rotating when I tighten it:

A few weeks ago, I found another Craigslist bargain - the matching Sherline milling machine, with some good extras including the expensive three-axis digital readout with tachometer.

When I picked it up, it had the cheap drill press vise seen in the background, mounted on the mill table. It also included the much more precise 2" Sherline vise, and I swapped to it right away and spent a good bit of time "tramming" - making it perfectly aligned with the X direction of the table.

The mounting for that vise seemed inadequate to me - just a pair of bent metal clamps. I installed it anyway with the intention of changing it later.

In preparation for that, I undertook a project that is almost a rite of passage when you get a new machine. I made a set of T-nuts - the special nuts that slide into the slot on the milling table, and allow you to mount things. You can buy them for almost nothing from Sherline, but there's just something about making them yourself. I actually used larger equipment at Grant Street for part of the process, just to speed it up, but I did the final drilling and tapping on the Sherline. The quarter in the picture gives a sense of scale - I don't often make things this tiny! I showed this picture to Curtis Palmer, a local trumpeter and instrument repairman, and he said, "Awww... those are adorable!"

In case you're dying to make your own, here's my hand-drawn plan - click to expand.

The other day, improving that vise mount moved up on my to-do list, after a cut snagged and knocked the vise out of alignment. Today I was recuperating from a very demanding, very rewarding concert series with Musical Associates, my chamber chorus, and I decided to spend the whole day in the shop doing some "gloriously inconsequential" work.

I started with some cold-rolled steel stock (center of photo) and milled it clean and square (front of photo). Looks like nothing, but that took about 45 minutes!

Once that was done, I cut four slices from the clean stock, and then milled them some more to get them perfectly square and all the same size.

I then drilled through each block (no picture), and used the milling machine to remove metal in an "L" shape.

When you're making something small, you sometimes have to work very close to the limits of the equipment. In this case, I had to mill that stock to within 0.020" (20 thousandths) of my mill vise to get it to the right dimension.

On each piece, as I reached the final pass of the mill cutter, I turned off the power, cleared all the chips, and made absolutely sure that I wasn't about to damage the vise. It turned out to be good practice - on the last piece, the cheap digital caliper I use to set depth somehow lost its "zero" point, and if I hadn't checked, I would have left a nasty gouge in the vise. Whew....

On each piece, I used the belt sander to round the "foot" so that it would rotate when being tightened. Here are the four pieces on and around the vise:

And here they are, holding the vise down on the Sherline milling machine. Much more sturdy!

So, this "gloriously inconsequential" project took about half the day, and ended with something that could have been made in a factory in 10 seconds. But, it's my hobby and my fun, and to me it felt like a day well-misspent!