Once of life’s many mysteries is how keyways get cut inside axle holes.  Thanks to my Shay project, I got to learn this neat skill recently.  First, I had to order a broach, sleeve, and shim from www.mcmaster.com.  One of my favorite websites with a great interface for ordering one of their 400,000 products.
A broach [...]

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One more wheel to final and one more faced, drilled, bored, and reamed.  I love having a lathe that will drill 1/2 inch holes like nothing.  A hole that size on my mini-lathe was a real ordeal.  Since the holes need to be reamed to .625 (5/8″ inch), I drill to .5, bore to .615, [...]

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I tend to jump around a little bit as I am machining parts when I can get away with it.  Typically though you try to do things in bulk so you can be efficient and accurate by reusing the same setup and tool settings.  Tonight I felt like turning a wheel down to its final [...]

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Some of you are probably confused about what I have been up to.  The last few posts have been out of context so I thought I would backup and explain what I am working on.  Most of the posts on this website were previously about an O Scale Logging Railroad I was building that was [...]

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