About time....

About 2 years ago I started making an outboard spider for my lathe. I had it bored , threaded, and rough sized. Never got around to cutting it down to final diameter or drilling and tapping for cross bolts.
Decided that today was the day. It rained pretty good this AM so shooting was out.

Thru hole could be bored larger if needed. It is currently around 1.3" in diameter. I used 5/8-18 Allen head bolts for the cross bolts. I used a jam nut to help hold the bolts in the lathe so I could cut the ends of each bolt flat and smooth.

Material is 6061 with .7" side walls. Kinda bulky but it was what I had on hand. I don't even want to discuss the heaps of swarf that was produced. Taking a .030 cut in Al leads to long, curly swarf. It is an absolute pain in the ass to deal with.

I also proved, once again, that I really need a drill press. Even a small bench top model would be a vast improvement. Drilling by hand just isn't cutting it.

Nice. Lucky dog, yours has outside threads. Ya, Geez, gotta have a drill press man. (or a MILL.....)

5/16", not 5/8", right? I like the way you turned the ends on the bolts, I did the same thing and intended to bore them for brass inserts made from wood screws, but got in a hurry and just use protective bushings on my parts if the finish matters.

I made half a trash can full of swarf turning my spider out of steel, what really sucked is the largest bit I had at home was 5/8" so that was a LOT of work with the boring bar.

So do you have a .45 caliber barrel blank ordered yet?

you keep going on tools and your gonna have to build an outbuilding as a shop.

Fiver, a car can't get near my garage already. I'm looking at a bench top drill press to keep the floor a bit more open. Grizzly has a nice variable speed bench top model for under 500 bucks that will do fine.

Ian, I thought about making some brass inserts but decided it wasn't required. A flat nosed bolt won't dig in like it would with the factory formed ridge on the nose. I can also use some thin shim stock to protect the barrel.

A 45 cal barrel? Nope. I have looked at some 44 cal barrels. Need to get finances right first. Might be waiting til fall for a barrel and what not. I may need to drive to Bill's place to cut some dovetails......

Thinking of a rebarreled Marlin 1894 in 44 mag. Think 20" twist barrel maybe 22-24 inches long. Shorten the mag tube to a button magazine. May only hold 5 rounds but how many do I need? A mill would help with dovetails and drilling for the front sight ramp. Actually may only need one dovetail to hold front of mag tube and forearm to barrel. I use a receiver sight so I may not even cut a dovetail for a rear sight?

You can also cut dovetails by hand easily enough with a safe-edge file. Ought to be easy for you on an octagonal barrel. What's going to eat your lunch is reamer+floating holder+barrel vise+octagonal insert+action vise. $400+ right there in tooling. Next one just costs you the barrel, though. I reamed the .45 ACP chamber in my Thunderbolt by hand with a T-handle no problem, so you might be able to skip that $125 item if you have a good bench vise and barrel vise.

Hey, that looks much better than last I seen. Glad to see you got it did, and it looks like you did a nice job too.

A barrel vise could be made. I have some plates we could use. You could make the inserts for it on your lathe. Maybe this winter if your not in a hurry we could conspire to make some.

Think of it this way....your only a few more tools away from enough to make whole guns. I can see it now...Brad's guna have the only homemade tube lever gun with wood furniture.

Used round tube,Rong Fu?...mill drill R8.

Bridgeport guys,rolling their eyes....fine.A BP (or clone)can,and probably will,come later BUT keep the Huflungdung for wood chores and as an adjunct to a bigger mill.

Right now,we use several,very well equipped DP's as first and second op machines to speed up,or in a lot of cases "instead" of swapping out BP collets to,drill a few holes.

I've been on the lookout for a used mill drill for the cabinet shop.Treat it like a rented mule,haha.

I am very pleased that mine came with the spindle already sporting threaded holes and a bag of bolts with
small button headed allen bolts screwed into the inner ends. Big plus.

But, Brad, that looks really nice. Should work well.

Bill