Well my weekend didn't start too well. Having decided the length of journey and costs to the London Exhibition were too great I at least thought I could make some workshop progress. Judging from some of the comments I'm glad I stayed home. I thought the Midlands Exhibition was great and I shall go again this year, is there any likelyhood of the Bristol Exhibition returning?

Friday PM I attempted to make a brass sleeve, 10mm O/A dia brass tubing opened out a tad to make it 8.75mm bore, from 8mm. Not a big task I thought…well the drill bit barely made a start before it slipped in the second hand keyless Rohm chuck, the chuck spun in the 1MT and the flat belt slipped off the pulleys!Off to the wood lathe and 5mins later the job was done, so not a great start on the ML1.

Saturdays task was to make my first backplate for an ER32 chuck. Saturday morning I achieved virtually nothing, I think the brand new RDG HSS tools were rubbing, time will tell once I've reground them. So I found a secondhand HSS cutter which I ground freehand and immediately saw the difference, cast iron is not after all the Devils material!

Yesterday ended on a high with only the drilling for the bolts to do this morning. Ok it wont impress anyone else here but as a first small project I'm rather pleased with the result. Importantly the register is a good fit. I used spotting drills to transfer the hole positions which worked a treat, another tip picked up from this wonderful forum. I'd never heard of them before.

Now fitted with the beautifully finished Eccentric Engineering collet extender.

Cheers

Chris