A New Hat? For an Owl

A coworker brought this in recently. It's an owl that hides a tape measure.

The end of the tape had a bent piece of metal pressed onto the end. This eventually fell off:

I made a new end out of machined brass sheet. It's a clamp and some small M1.6 bolts clamp the end onto the tape:
 

 Another property of the end, apart from just being on the end, is that it is a fixed distance from the marking on the tape so it needs to be pretty accurately at the 0cm point at the end of the brass. tape measures aren't massively accurate as the tape stretches and so on, but the new end is pretty close:

The other job (perhaps it's main job, really) of the end is to stop the tape from disappearing into the body of the owl when it is fully wound in. This it does well, probably better than the original:

Is that a hat? I'm not sure what owl's have on their heads, probably nothing. I thought about making it in a hat shape, but that wouldn't have worked well as an end for measuring, so I went with a flat end.

It's interesting how complicated something like this can be when you try to make another one. It's off to the long term test of use now...

Aargh! The End Has Fallen Off. Again

Years ago I bought a vice that I have used a lot since. Unfortunately it came with a handle that has two round ends pressed on it:

 The problem with the handle is that the ends have a habit of falling off:

 After an end fell off for about the fifth time I finally got fed up enough to build another handle. The first attempt using some 12mm bolts failed as the material is just too nasty when machining it. You can just about turn the outside down, but drilling and tapping is impossible.  I used one of the chair legs that I chopped up with my bolt cutters to make a new handle:

The ends are turned aluminium held on with M6 cap head screws. If they fall off I can put them back on easily, and maybe use thread lock. So far so good, and it looks better too.

Tripod Fix Adjustment

I fixed my tripod a while back:

https://trochilidae.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/tripod-fixed-ive-printed-two-new-clamps.html

The clamp works by pressing onto a small rectangular block which stops the leg from collapsing. The 3D printed clamp wasn't quite the same size as the original on one of the clamps, so it didn't push very hard on the block. this meant the leg wasn't very firmly held when extended. Eventually the clamp slipped over the block and I lost it.

So I machined a new larger block out of nylon. This has fixed the problem and the clamp is now very firm when latching the leg.

Canopy Fitting Fix

The canopy fitting that I remade in nylon was taken to Italy and tried out. The pivot bolt and nut were fouling on the part that this remade part fits into, so I have dropped the bolt and nuts by counter-boring the holes:

I used a 20mm Forstner bit to do this. The bolt and nut are now much lower and hopefully should easily clear the
other part:

I bought some stainless bolts, nuts and washers as I realised that the canopy is going to be used by the sea, and the original bolts were maybe not going to weather sea water exposure very well.

Replacement Canopy Fitting

Replacement Canopy Fitting

Due to a failure of a fitting in a canopy, I am attempting to make a replacement out of nylon. The original is an injection moulding made of an indeterminate plastic. It has cracked due to impact and isn't easily glued.

The large block of nylon was chopped into a block of roughly the correct size:

I used the bandsaw to shape the block roughly to the shape required.

The block is at the limit of what can be machined on the mill

Die Holder

I have no way to hold dies on the lather. I have just bought a collet chuck for the lather tailstock so it seemed sensible to try to make a die holder for the collet chuck. The collets I have only go to 20mm and the dies are 25mm, so they can't just go in to a collet.

One end was turned to 19.5mm so it will fit into a collet. The other end is bored out to hold the die.

The final die holder has four tapped holes around the edge to hold and align the die.

I have some smaller screws coming...

Vice

Up until now I've been using a large vice that I bought to use on the drill press. It's just too big though, and uses up too much of the Z axis travel when milling. So I bought a small machinist vice.

It's a quick release vice and is tightened by the knurled knob. Tightening by hand isn't enough to firmy grip, fortunately there's a hole for a bar in the knob. Unfortunately one wasn't supplied. Fortunately I had some bolts so I made a tightening bar:

It was a good chance to try out my new knurling tool. The knurl came out OK, but didn't quite mesh properly on the larger diameter.


The bar works well though: