The Jigmaster Project

Started by Rothmar2, April 30, 2015, 10:51:52 AM

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Rothmar2

Thanks for the generous words guys. I assure you this thread has not died, just stalled due to some admin trouble from work. In the meantime I have been procuring parts and tools to continue.
I have Alan C's gears, bridge, jack and yoke ready to go. Mike obtained a bunch of UNC taps off EBay, that included a box full of 5-40's and has sent them to me. I have purchased a box of cobalt-moly 2.6mm drills, so once I'm back to work mid-Jan, this thread will liven back up.


Rothmar2

#76
OK, so back at work and have been able to make some progress again.
2.6mm drills and extra taps procured to be able to continue



Drill out all holes from both ends of the rough frame with 2.6mm drills



And finish tapping the holes at my datum end



Made up a plate to mount the frame on (actually the 3rd plate drilled from when I made the drilling jig). It has been skimmed at one end to be square, the datum end of the rough frame will bolt to this. Bolts are M8 cap heads turned down and re-threaded 5-40 UNC.



Bolt up and mount on lathe. The collar behind the mounting plate was trued up beforehand. I did this so I could check on the tightness of mounting screws, I figured they would work loose from the vibration of the intermediate cuts. The plate is held in place with  M10 thread bar clamped in the chuck, and a nut do draw it hard against the chuck. The dial gauge was used to get it all running reasonably true.



Aiming to turn this down to the width of the stand



First trim it to the stand width using facing cuts



Had to frequently check the holding bolts. I'll add that to true this frame down took about 5 hours of work. I was only able to take very fine cuts, max 0.15mm at a time, I wasn't overly confident in the holding ability of the re-threaded mounting screws.
I used a chuck speed of 375rpm, seemed to give a good result.



Then bore the inside of the frame



I stopped when I was getting worried that I was approaching too close to the frame holes. A quick check of the spool diameter confirmed I had enough clearance in the bore.



Skim down the outside of the frame.



And all cleaned up after 5hrs!



Unbolt from the chuck plate and clean out the trimmed end holes with the 2.6mm drill.



Just tapped 3 holes for the trial fit, no point doing them all until I could confirm that this would actually work....



Plates mount on OK.....



And the spool spins without catching!



So, I'm pretty happy to have made it this far. Still much more to go......

Alto Mare

Can't say enough about this Chris, it's like watching a great tv series.
I'm enjoying the ride...thank you!

Sal
Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need to find one good reason why it will.

Cortez_Conversions

Visit: cortezconversions.com
Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need to find one good reason why it will.-Sal

thorhammer

In awe of this process and skillzzzzz. It's not so long ago that my own thread titled "Jigmaster project" would have been a picture of swapping in a red anni spool with the quick take apart, lol.

Rothmar2

#80
Thank you Sal, I hope this is "keeping it real" more so than some of the tripe that is on Discovery Channel lately  ;D. Tom, while it all looks good on here, I have some confessions to make. This first frame will only work with the Bakelite plates. There are 2 holes (for the posts) that are just shade off. I will be able to carefully recover that with some modifications to the SS rings and plate bores. Seeing as I have a set of your plates coming, I'll have to redo the drilling jig with your plates as the template. I think where the error has come, was a couple of the holes were not perfectly true round in the Bakelite plate, and when I transfer punched the centre pops, the punch possibly could not have been located correctly. As you well know that's all it takes sometimes..... >:(. I had a SNAFU with one of the 2.6mm drills. It snapped about 5mm off the end. I was able to break most of it out by using a stainless roll pin with an extra slot filed to grip the flutes and break about half of it out. I figured with the last bit I couldn't get, I just punched it into the base of the hole and will forget all about it  >:(. I wish I had an EDM though......
I have finished tapping the rest of the frame holes without incident. It was still a slow tedious process.
Going to bend up a couple of 501 width frames next. Will have to make up some spacing collars for the punch/die first. Once I have a few frames prepped I'll decide what I am going to do with the reel seat. This is proving to be a "reel conundrum" as I don't have access to a mill. I had an old gentleman who had a mill in has shed who was willing to help me with this project, but he has been unwell for a fair few months now and things aren't looking great in the near future. His advice and guidance has been a big part in making it this far.
 Thanks again for your interest everyone, will keep getting more pix up when I can.

David Hall

Sure hope the network doesn't cancel this series.
I love it.

Shark Hunter

Life is Good!

mhc

#83
My respect for your work keeps growing with this project. To quote Lee - 'NICE!'

With the drilling jig - could you check / remark the holes using the mandrel you drilled for the rings? The holes in the rings seem to line up pretty well with Tom's plates - to my eye at least.

It can't be too difficult - a lot of people do it.

Rothmar2

Thanks for checking that out Mike. Bit of a different deal with the drilling mandrels for rings and the frame, namely the hole diameters (ie. 3.0mm for the rings, 2.6mm for the frame to tap the 5-40 threads). But having said that, when I get my hands on Tom's plates , I will be able able to do better check. It's possible that the ring mandrel could be spot on, and I could use it to mark the centers for a new frame drill jig if it comes to that. I want to be 100% sure before I go ahead and drill any more frames, that they are accurate enough so there is no unnecessary wear on our sets of Tom's plates from misaligned holes. I have wondered that during the machining process whether the frame "sprung" out a bit from residual bending stress, and the now thinner section thickness? When I get back in phone range, I'll be able to get some more pix up to show what I mean.
  Have made up some spacers for the frame punch, and am ready to bend a couple of 501 width frames. One if these will (eventually) make its way to you Mike. Massive thanks for all you have done behind the scenes for me.
   Am really very uncertain whether I am going to be able to get the reel seats done without the use of a mill. Have been researching a couple of options, but going off what I'm reading, it's not looking good for the tools I currently have available. I really need to get my hands on a 6mm end mill to mount on the drill press, as a minimum at this point. The frame side of things might be stalled again for a while yet.
   But plenty of other things to do in the meantime...... ;)

Rothmar2

#85
Have given up with the mobile phone redirecting problems with photobucket, and tried a PC instead. Don't like doing it this way, but it will do for now.

Bit of an update, not a great deal of progress, but a bit more for those interested.

I salvaged this 316 hydraulic connection block that was in a scrap bin a while back, I figured I could make a reel seat from it



I had to make a faceplate up which could be used to bore the frame recess. It was quicker than having to mount the lathe's full sized faceplate, heavy and a PITA to take on and off repeatedly. The one shown was made from a blank flange, and a discarded 30mm diameter bolt, also salvaged from scrap. Thus I was able to use this setup in the 3 jaw chuck to machine the recess



Final check with the frame before removing from the lathe



Pretty happy with the result



I will be able to reset the seat on the faceplate to skim the rod profile recess, and the reel feet. I will show that when its done.
My conundrum at the moment is how to join these two parts together. Part of me wants to TIG them together, but I'm worried the heat might warp the frame. The other option is to drill and tap four countersunk screws. But trying to keep this all aligned while drilling into the curved joining surfaces is going to be tricky. Its actually doing my head in a bit.







Alto Mare

And the flame keeps burning hot...love it!
Thank you for keeping it going!

Sal

Forget about all the reasons why something may not work. You only need to find one good reason why it will.

mhc

Looking at the photos, if you invert the assembly and drill a central hole vertically through the centre of the stand and into the frame, where the interface is near horizontal, then tap the frame hole and use a screw to hold the stand in place while you drilled the holes through the stand into the curved interface? The matching curved surfaces should stop rotational movement between the parts.

For photos I use picasa 3 without problems - but on a PC, haven't tried it on an iphone

Mike
It can't be too difficult - a lot of people do it.

Rothmar2

Mike what you have described was the way I was thinking of going about it. Guess I get a "drain hole" under the spool by going this way. For looks, it won't win any awards, but I think I'll just have to go with it.
Probably get onto it tonight. If successful, I'm pretty much home and hosed.....bar quite a bit of chain drilling and filing of the frame cutouts to reduce weight, and trimming of the excess metal above the side plate mount holes (several more hours work there)....oh, and then the polishing. Once the mating holes are done, will then go back and machine the seat to final shape, bit of clean up filing there......and more polishing.

But there is a light back there somewhere with this stage of the project. I wish I had a mill.

Rothmar2

#89
So have gone ahead and done the seat/frame join as Mike has described.

Mark out the hole location on the back of the seat. M6 bolt to use as the clamp



Set the frame up on the drill press.
Note the shims under one end to level the frame



Drill 4mm for pilot hole



Then 6mm



Put the clamping M6 bolt through and tighten down



Then drill 4mm screw holes around the locating clamp hole. The counter sunk screws for the join are M5.



Holes all drilled



Then run the M5 tap all the way through all four holes from the flat side while the frame/seat is clamped. This will makes sure the threads are straight between the two pieces.
The threads in the seat holes will come in handy for the next step for machining the feet.
 I then countersunk the holes so the screws will sit below the level of the seat.
At this time, still machining the feet, will show that in a separate post when completed.