Now what?

john coloccia said:
Are you suggesting remounting it from the plywood to something else? I've actually considered the but I want to let it be for the time being. If I did that, I would probably just grab a piece of 80/20 or something like that, and then I'd bring it down to my machine shop and shim the bed perfect using their huge surface plate. Honestly, I don't want to do that much too it right now because it's really more than fine, but I also don't want to make it worse when I attach it to the bench.

I'm having fun shimming, tweaking and making small little modifications here and there. I really like this machine. It's very easy to work with. You can tell it was designed by someone that actually has a clue just what the heck he's doing. I've worked with a lot equipment over the years, and it's not common.
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I would suggest leaving it mounted on the cabinet and screw that down to a flat surface. Shimming is okay also.
 
john coloccia said:
Hey, does anyone have any hints for securing it to my bench? The bench isn't dead flat, and the board it's bolted to isn't dead flat. Can I just assume that the bed has yanked the board however it needs to go, and then just shim the board so it doesn't rock? I don't have a 6' long surface plate here (:eek:) so I wouldn't know how else to do it other than just assume it's OK.

Thanks!
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Find your local table installer and borrow his/her Starrett 98 level. Then you can test for twist in the bed. The bed should be level across the ways at all points along its length. As noted, shim as needed.

Dave
 
DaveK said:
Find your local table installer and borrow his/her Starrett 98 level. Then you can test for twist in the bed. The bed should be level across the ways at all points along its length. As noted, shim as needed.

Dave
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I may have one still kicking around somewhere, actually. I needed it for a project some years ago, but can't find it at the moment. That was in my experimental airplane building days, so I may have sold it figuring I'd probably never need it again, but maybe not! I just gave away a bunch of stepper motors, stages, micrometer heads and things like that. May have been in there. :mad:
 
Rip said:
Could you explain what you mean by "back the shaft up with my hand to avoid deflection"?
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Thanks for the PM and pointing out I didn't explain this to your satisfaction in an expedient fashion. I've come to the conclusion it's best that I concentrate on my real job and making cues, than to try and help the members here.
 

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Randy, can you use a smaller spoons please. I just can't take that much in one mouthful at a time.
Neil
 
Rem_Macs said:
Any pictures of your equipment all set up?
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I'll post something later today if I have a chance. I just tried to use the router for the first time and snapped the threads in the router mount. LOL. I'm looking around for an M5 Helicoil. You know, sometimes I think every screw hole in aluminum should just be helicoiled from day 1. I've actually done that on some item's I've built in the past. Makes it 10 times more durable than it was in the first place. :)

Anyhow, I have to watch the gorilla torque.
 
Oh, definitely not! It's dead nuts for a while and then falls off a bit. I'm sure that's just from a small twist in the bed, which if you saw how it's sitting it would be a miracle if it was straight.

I did end up getting another Starrett level since I always seem to have a use for one, and it's perfect for this job. Today's the day I level my bench, mount everything solidly down, shim the bed to get it flat, etc etc. Do it once, do it right and never worry about it again. :)
 
Incidentally, when I'm all done with that (maybe I'll take a video...we'll see), I plan on reboring the soft jaws one last time, and then make some collets (I pretty much make collets for everything I want to run true). Maybe I'll just video the whole procedure since I'm sure this stuff probably seems daunting for someone who doesn't have machine shop experience. It's actually quite simple, though.
 
I took some video...not sure if I'll post it or not, but after I screwed it to my bench, I did have just a little twist to take out. It was very minor but I couldn't get it perfect because the smallest shim I had was .001". :) Anyhow, I'm pretty happy with that!

I did have to shim the center two mounts about .020" to get it mostly straight. Now I just have a minor depression of about .004" or so in the middle of the lathe, so I'll be content with 4 mils over 6 feet. Again, I'm happy and I could go after it, but I'm not going to. It's actually just following the .020" depression in my bench.

On the advice of a PM I received, I leveled the beds with the head stock on. That wasn't my initial plan, but it DOES change things just slightly. It was just about enough that I removed a .002" shim I had previously installed.

Then I rebored and got my runout to about .001" using just 1 tommy bar and my hand on the chuck. With two tommy bars really tightening it down, the run out is considerably worse but that's to be expected because of how we're boring. That all goes away when you make a collet, though, so it's really kind of irrelevant.
 
Well, I finished my first cue. It's nothing special and it's not perfect. The leather wrap could be a lot better...doubt I'll attempt one again without a jig of some sort. It's way too light, and I used the wrong weight bolts so I can't get it where it needs to be...I'll have to fix that when I get around to it. That said, we all agreed it plays quite nicely, certainly no worse than what I normally play with, so it's taken the lead spot in my case.

The joint is Aegis and phenolic, and everything else is Ebony and Aegis. The ebony was unplanned. I didn't have the right size of phenolic, so I used what I could find at my local Woodcraft. Now that I see it complete, I kind of like how it looks so I may just keep doing that for the time being, especially since I have some left over.

I've got a good deal of practicing and improving to do, but I still ended up with something that looks kind of pretty and is playable, and other than the cow that donated the leather, no one got hurt. I can't really ask for more than that. :D
 

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john coloccia said:
Well, I finished my first cue. It's nothing special and it's not perfect. The leather wrap could be a lot better...doubt I'll attempt one again without a jig of some sort. It's way too light, and I used the wrong weight bolts so I can't get it where it needs to be...I'll have to fix that when I get around to it. That said, we all agreed it plays quite nicely, certainly no worse than what I normally play with, so it's taken the lead spot in my case.

The joint is Aegis and phenolic, and everything else is Ebony and Aegis. The ebony was unplanned. I didn't have the right size of phenolic, so I used what I could find at my local Woodcraft. Now that I see it complete, I kind of like how it looks so I may just keep doing that for the time being, especially since I have some left over.

I've got a good deal of practicing and improving to do, but I still ended up with something that looks kind of pretty and is playable, and other than the cow that donated the leather, no one got hurt. I can't really ask for more than that. :D
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Not bad at all. Looks like you are well on your way. I remember about 20 years ago, when I built my first golf club. My results were not impressive. Yours are. :wink:
j2
 
Holy cow you have your lathe for 30 days and already a finished cue?

Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. Hope you don't have a family:)



JC
 
JC said:
Holy cow you have your lathe for 30 days and already a finished cue?

Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. Hope you don't have a family:)



JC
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It was rushed so it may well warp. I took my own advice. When people start building guitars, I tell them for the first one your only goal should be finishing it quickly and getting through each step once. I didn't want to waste two months just to discover I made a fatal mistake on day 1! Now that I'm through the first one, I feel a little more comfortable that I'm probably not going to make some unrecoverable mistake during the basic prep work.
 
john coloccia said:
It was rushed so it may well warp. I took my own advice. When people start building guitars, I tell them for the first one your only goal should be finishing it quickly and getting through each step once. I didn't want to waste two months just to discover I made a fatal mistake on day 1! Now that I'm through the first one, I feel a little more comfortable that I'm probably not going to make some unrecoverable mistake during the basic prep work.
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It took me about 4 months to build my first 15oz cue:mad:

So I said screw it, I drilled about 8 inches of 5/16 hole and filled it with steel permanently. It's still straight and doesn't hit all that bad.

JC
 
JC said:
It took me about 4 months to build my first 15oz cue:mad:

So I said screw it, I drilled about 8 inches of 5/16 hole and filled it with steel permanently. It's still straight and doesn't hit all that bad.

JC
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The butt on this cue weighs about 13oz, so not that great either. I wish I'd weighed some things as I went along so I'd have an anchor for the future. I also used 3/8-16 set screws for weight bolts. Total mistake. 6" of 3/8 set screws weighs about an ounce. Not much help. So right there, I learned three big lessons!

I think what I'll end up doing is redrilling for 1/2-13 screws. I'll drill maybe two inches longer than I normally would, and then turn down a bit of brass threaded rod to just under the tap drill size, leaving a few threads at the top. I'll slot the top and voila, I have a weight bolt I can set in there permanently. Maybe I can save myself some time by finding a long enough brass set screw.

If I could find a long enough 1/2-13 tap, I could just skip the extra machining all together, but I can't find an appropriate tap longer than 7". I'll be lucky to get 6" of usable threads from that. I think 2 inches of brass threaded rod should weight just about 1.5oz. 14.5oz isn't too terrible for a butt. Steel weight bolts will get it the rest of the way. I have to say, though, that I normally play with a 19.5oz to 20.5oz cue, but after playing with mine for an hour or so, I was really starting to dig it! Playing is kind of effortless. I was actually playing extremely well with it, and so was everyone else that tried it. There's a lesson in here somewhere too. I just need to find it! Maybe it has something to do with the balance.

Anyhow, I definitely know to be a lot more careful about that next time! It was just dumb luck that this didn't end up as firewood, right next to all the vaguely guitar shaped pieces in my kindling pile.
 
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