The compound-feed method has the tremendous advantage of not altering your tailstock-to-spindle alignment, however. Other methods of turning tapers include offsetting the tailstock, offsetting the headstock (typical on very small mini-lathes), or using a tapering jig (typical on very large lathes). Around 3″ is about the most you’ll get in bench top lathes. You are severely limited by the travel of your compound, and on most hobby lathes, that isn’t much.

This works great when you need a steep angle, or a short taper. This involves using the compound as though it was the carriage hand wheel to feed a turning operation. There are a few different methods of doing this on the lathe, but the simplest is the compound-feed method. The next operation is going to be a new skill- turning a taper. Use a small #1 center drill here, because we’re going to be drilling a small hole. Chuck up about 10″ of 3/8″ brass rod.įace the end with our new brass turning bit, and center-drill. That one slight change makes all the difference for brass. This bit is made the same was as the steel bits, but when grinding the two rakes in our process, hold the bit parallel to the grinder wheel so we get our usual 10° side rake, but no back rake. There is still a normal side rake (which “falls away” behind the cutting edge in this picture). Here’s the bit viewed from the side, with the cutting edge along the top. You can see the cutting edge is flat along the top of the bit. It looks a lot like the ones we made for steel, but let’s look at the cutting edge in detail. That way the chips are basically hitting a 90° angle at the cutting edge, and are forced to break off right away. The top surface of the tool is flat, except for a bit of side rake. The way we do that is by eliminating the back rake. The chips don’t like to break off as they hit the cutting edge, so they need extra help. Brass is softer than steel (no kidding), and tends to be “grabby”. You should already have some bits made for steel from our last lesson, but brass has different needs. While we have the grinder out, we will need to make a new tool bit for turning brass. If you have a Dremel rotary tool, the diamond wheel would also work well, but be careful not to overheat it. This steel is harder than all those tools, and you’ll damage them while the needle laughs off your attempts to affect it. Take your time and dunk in water frequently.ĭo not attempt to cut this needle with wire-cutters, tin snips, a hacksaw, or anything other than a grinding device. When grinding the sewing needle, stop and dunk it very frequently! If you get carried away and overheat it, you’ll take the hardness out, ruining its ability to hold the point. Make sure your grinding doesn’t leave a burr or mushroom top on the end. On the bench grinder, grind down the eye-end of the sewing needle until the overall length is about 1.5″. A little smaller or a little bigger is okay. I like a #18, because this is beefy enough, and a standard size that is readily available. Again, all credit to Clickspring for the cleverness here.įind a fairly heavy hand sewing needle to use for your point. Furthermore, because of how we’re going to attach it, you can easily replace it if it ever dulls or bends. Sewing needles are very very hard and hold their point very well. The cleverness of this is that it’s nothing more than a sewing needle shortened to length. Here’s our final product- a very sharp brass scriber with a replaceable hardened steel point. Verbosity is my thing, as you all know, so buckle up.

It’s also a good chance to elucidate some new techniques more verbosely. He has a great video on making this tool, but I have a slightly different order of operations that I think is a bit easier. The design of this scriber is absolutely terrific, in my opinion.

His YouTube channel is among the best on the internet, and if you are somehow a reader of mine and not already a viewer of his, go correct that immediately. The only materials required here are a sewing needle and about 10″ of 3/8″ brass round bar.īefore we begin, a quick shout-out to Clickspring, from whom I shamelessly stole this design. This project requires no additional tools beyond what you already have if you’ve followed along this far. And it’s pretty!Īs with my other lathe posts, I’ll assume you’ve read all the previous articles, and now own the tools described therein. Pen or pencil marks are difficult to see, and silver Sharpie or chalk marks are imprecise. It’s also useful when you’re fabricating big things with steel from the mill, which has crud and scale on it. When used with layout fluid, this is a very precise way to mark guide lines on a part for machining. A scriber is a lovely way to mark metal, either with or without layout fluid. In this post, we’re going to make a brass scribing tool. Now that we’ve learned how to grind HSS tool bits, some really nice new avenues open up to us.

Metal scribe square