Rich's Tools and Projects

Started on the rollers or drivers or drums, whatever you  them for the belt grinder today. I've got to whittle 3 more ends out of sprockets to put in the pipe i have. Once i have both ends in a tube I'll weld it and then put it on a shaft in a lathe and turn the whole thing true. There's a lot of extra meat in this pipe so i have plenty of room for that.

So i got tired of the belt on my lathe slipping. I made a tensioner to help with heavy cuts.

I'm starting to get the slightest impression that Rich has a lathe..

AllisKidD21 wrote:

I'm starting to get the slightest impression that Rich has a lathe..

You should see his Instagram

This thing has somehow diverted my attention from mowers but gotten me in the shop a lot more. Not entirely a bad thing haha.

Got both of the drivers turned for the belt grinder, finally starting to size things up. Cut a board to hold the drivers apart. Center to center i think it's 26" or 27", it was bigger than my 24" starret rule. It's turning out bigger than i thought, lol.

What if you make the bracket that holds the drums farther apart than you need, and mount one drum on a spring that pulls towards that bracket so it acts as a tensioner

The idea is to have the top one adjustable anyway.

I been working pretty steady since what I make is auto parts for speed shops. If the shut down lasts longer, more people will be layed off and I might be in that group of layoffs. Several people have been layed off already, where I work at. I was hoping to get layed off, I could use a vacation but I don't want to be either. Just been staying busy and distant from people as per the government advised. Got a little done on my project. That's about it for me.

@RichieRichOverdrive You will need a way to adjust for tracking on the tensioner side of things. Would be good to be able to adjust the tension on each side of the roller independently. With the rollers being flat across, the belt will want to wonder side to side. The end caps you have on there will just tear up the belt when it hits them. It would also help to put an inch long bevel on both ends that extend under the belt of each roller, this will help with tracking of the belt. I actually build and fix the industrial versions of a belt sander at my job.

The bearings I have will gyrate in the housings to account for misalignment. I'm planning on aligning it off of that and a slot for the bearing and shaft to move in. I like your bevel idea, i may just do that. What kind of bevel are we talking, 5 or 10 degrees? Come to think of it, aren't flat belt pulleys rounded to keep the belt on? That would make sense in this application.

@RichieRichOverdrive Oh yah, I see on the gyrate in the housing thing, would be handy to make it adjustable while the machine is running. For the bevels, it's never a drastic angle that I see, I would say 5 degrees or less. On a polishing lathe setup (a bigger version of yours) the wheel that you do the grinding on can be flat with no bevel but the edges are rounded to prevent cutting into the belt and the belt always lays over the edge of the wheel. Meaning the belt is always wider then the wheel that you are grinding on.

Oh, a little tidbit of info you can use, idler tension should be kept under 40 lbs. of pressure or you wear out the bearings fast and blow them. Would eventually blow the belt too, sounds like a shotgun, LOL.

I started putting on a bevel last night, 2° and 1¼" in from the sides. Seems right.

RichieRichOverdrive wrote:

I started putting on a bevel last night, 2° and 1¼" in from the sides. Seems right.

Should be good. You will notice the belt will kinda take shape of the roller when tight, is a good thing. When running, the belt always wants to run on the high spot of the wheel which you are controlling with the bevels on the ends. We run the idlers till they blow, LOL. The belt wears the center down which makes it a smaller diameter, so the belt kicks to the sides when adjusting it in. A trick to fix this is putting masking take on the center of the wheel to temporarily build it back up so the belt tracks right in the center again. Lasts till we get another idler wheel, LOL.

In the process of making a material guide for my bandsaw, i broke the blade on it.


Moderately disgruntled, i finished it with a hacksaw.

Finished off the other roller today.


I think me welding the hubs hardened them. HSS won't touch them now.

Drilled the uprights for the shafts and got it mocked up. I can't go much further until i get another bandsaw blade.


In other news, I tried cold blueing for the first time today. Turned out surprisingly well considering how old the blue is and how little effort I put in.

That looks good.

Rich, as far as the cold blueing goes, I've found that a little heat is a good thing - kinda opens up the pores of the metal. Warming with a heat gun is sufficient to get the blueing nicely evened out.
JMHO YMMV

I couldn't find any alcohol to properly clean it, so that wouldn't really have made that much difference. I was out in the sun on my little shop patio though. So that probably did help. Thanks for the tip.

https://www.autozone.com/brake-and-power-steering-fluid-additives/brake-cleaner/autozone-brake-parts-cleaner-aerosol-spray-14oz/8130_0_0?spps.s=3123&cmpid=LIA:US:EN:AD:NL:1000000:PER:71700000060528029&gclid=CjwKCAjw4KD0BRBUEiwA7MFNTZltvjVqyFJiP855mNZ4oN_EOigsym4EB3huaabzdBbUQ_4N3LbO-hoCteYQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Works pretty good, too.

I did hit it with some carb cleaner. I'm pretty conservative with that stuff though, especially now.

I finally made myself a bead breaker thingy. Wasnt really the plan when i got up today but the gt6k's rims have a big beadlock in the rim that made it a pain to get the tire over the bead. I have a big metal plate I'll drill and tap holes to bolt it to, for now it's just clamped onto some c channel so i can get these tires finished up

So i got a bit of a graduation present...or a "sorry communist china entirely obliterated your senior year" present, however you will...


1974 vintage Bridgeport 1hp J head, 9x42 table, milling machine, with (of course non working) factory X axis powerfeed.

Alright I've tried to upload more pictures and finish this post for 15 minutes now but every time I try to upload a picture the website tries to reload and says something like "unable to perform previous operation due to low memory"

Actually it worked for once, here's the vise i got with it. I believe it's a 6" Enco pull down vise judging by the bit of burgundy paint on it. It's currently being cleaned with electrolysis because it was rusty on the inside and felt crusty.


Here's an old army surplus handwheel that happened to fit the quill fine feed shaft nicely. Had to drill and ream a ⅛" hole and tap in a roll pin and it works nicely, even as it's total overkill. You can also see the knob i turned for the feed reverse selector.


As it turns out, the feed selector knob was really for nought as a bevel gear higher up in the quill feed drive is stripped. I can still use the handwheel for fine feed though.


These are the X and Y axis locks, neither came with a the original handle, and due to an optical scale option this machine the saddle was tapped for a traditional lock but didnt have one. The darker piece is the original, everything else i turned myself.


Got this one to upload without site crashing on like try 5 or 6. Lost count.

The powerfeed has a 90v DC motor. I think there's a short in the windings from the motor getting oil in it and the oil burning off. When you run it it starts smoking almost immediately, but it's more of a burnt brush smell than a burnt conformal coating smell. The commutator bars get really hot especially in one spot. You guys are smarter than me on this stuff so it you have any insight on brushed DC motors please let me know.


That's about all the pictures i have for now, other stuff has gone on too, nothing major though.

Machine vise and baking soda soup

Nice Bridgeport. Got one at my job like that one. You can try drying out the armature with brake clean and blow it out, to see if it still shorts out. Use a multimeter to try testing it. Set for ohms and should be 0 resistance with both leads on computator where the brushes ride. Then full resistance or no contact from computator to shaft of armature.

I'm looking at getting it rewound and rebuilt. I'm afraid some solvent will hurt the conformal coating