Beam Compass

[Phil]

That is certainly a keeper, one to passed down for generations. Beautiful!

Phil

[CarveOne]

As Yoda would say, You knocked that one out of the ballpark, you did ...

Very elaborate work sir.

CarveOne

[SteveNelson46]

Ted,

You never cease to amaze.

[scottp55]

Ted,
Enjoying the pics in small bites while surfacing small branches.
Dad had three standard praises;
For engineering stuff....Elegant!
For personal accomplishments...Ya Done Good
For doing something well....an "Atta Boy" pat on the back
(of course one of his favorite sayings was "One Aw Sh*T!! negates 10 Atta Boys:)
Up to Beam Compass II and enjoying everything I see...Ya got about 10 Atta Boys....and betting you do good after I inspect #3
It's still a WOW!!! from me
Time to cut back of branch #3:)
scott

[scottp55]

Third WOW!!
I gave up counting at 12 "Atta Boys"...and didn't see any "Oops Aw Sh*ts" at all!
An ELEGANT piece of Craftsmanship that anyone would be extremely proud to own or have Crafted!!
Ya Done Good Ted!!!
Has your Brother-in Law recovered consciousness yet?
scott

[Wod]

Extremely well done! Don't forget to sign it so 100 years from now folks will still know who made it.

[TReischl]

An update:

They arrived the day after XMas as planned. When we gave him the beam compass I was totally surprised, he actually got misty eyed. I wasn't expecting that.

As I mentioned in an earlier post Ernie is a great guy, he is a doer, not a watcher. The last three days we spent a lot of time in the shop as he explored how I go about doing things. He just dives right in. Right now I am in the process of building a clamping "system" for the router table using the T tracks. I am using the mini mill to fabricate the parts. He has never used one so he wanted to know all about how it worked and what it can do. I will be posting about the clamping system when it is finished. That is going to take a while, right now I need to tap about a hundred holes in some aluminum blocks.

Rarely do I sign any of the stuff I make. That is just me.

[scottp55]

Misty Eyed is Good
That Teeny engraving job is fantastic!
I keep going back to the pics
scott

[scottp55]

Ted,Just looking at those pics again, and you said aluminium was cut all with the .25mm TBN.....Was that one of the Chinese .125" shanks, or .25" shank?
Have you tried cutting hardwood with it since?

Just trying to get a sense of just how rugged they are(getting an order together to add 2,3,4,5 MM to my selection,and wondering if my smaller ones(.25-1mm should be reordered also).
All mine are still cutting good, but have a large(for me) Teak 3D maybe coming soon.
Thanks....and still AWED by that project!!!
scott

[TReischl]

Hey Scott,

I used the el cheapo chinese ones with the .125 shanks. Those are carbide. I also have some of the .25 shanks.

Here is an interesting thing. I use a lot of HSS tooling to cut aluminum. It does not seem to affect cutting wood afterwards. There is a mindset among wood workers that carbide is best, period. HSS does a better job on aluminum and soft woods since it takes a sharper edge than carbide. It is really easy to see the difference on a machine like the mini mill when cutting wood. The HSS slices, the carbide plows.

[scottp55]

Thanks Ted!!
May toss a couple larger HSS TBN's into the order, just to check out if better on punky sections of firewood that may come up.
Those little ones are Great, and you have to like the side angles:) Actually think the little ones hold an edge better(nothing to base it on quite yet), but not tremendously impressed by the .25" shank ones on edge cutting half to full depth as far as finish goes(but only half dozen 3D cuts that showed that so far).
Thanks again Ted(Hate to think of what you're doing Next)
scott

[TReischl]

Thanks Ted!!
......
Thanks again Ted(Hate to think of what you're doing Next)
scott

Yea, I hate to think of what I did next too. There I was, all happy as a clam in dirty water and then, SWMBO struck! She does glass work, kiln, artsy, yanno. She made these what I call "handkerchief" vases with a hole in the bottom so they become lights. Well sure enough, she needed bases. Did them as segmented laminations of hard maple and then did all the milling work to fit the light sockets etc. Then they got painted with high gloss enamel on the lathe.

The "next" after that was even worse though it was of my own doing. Building special table clamps for the cnc, needed about 100 holes drilled and tapped in aluminum. Tapping is fine on the mini mill, but no reverse to back out so had to use drill and socket method. Here comes the rub, right after I did that I discovered that for the magnificent sum of $12 I could add a reverse switch to back the tap out. So now the switch is installed with no holes to tap.

What IS coming next was caused by watching that evil YouTube. Viewed some stuff on rose engine lathes. Got to thinking, I can do that on the cnc with the rotary. So I have been busy modeling up my first piece. Now that will fun!

[scottp55]

I jumped down that Rabbit Hole a few years ago, when 2 people I know mentioned it within weeks of each other...ate better part of a day on YouTube.
Two people should be interested in that thread when you get to it Ted
Maineshops as he built one years ago, and Tailmaker liked some of the patterns so much he made a Guilloche Pattern Generator program

You've been busy:)
scott

Hmmm......Does Koala disaster relief count Tailmaker?

[Tailmaker]

Scott, Ted,

FWIW, the Guilloche Generator (like my other software) is discontinued and no longer for sale. The web site tailmaker.net will be shut down in April but the demo can be downloaded at https://www.dropbox.com/s/hddqb02kb0pny ... l.zip?dl=0
Anyway, if somebody would show me a donation receipt of $59 to a disaster relief charity (email to "slomove AT outlook.com") I could still issue a license for the full version...

JB