Face them off in 4-jaw, or clamp 4-jaw to table as a vice (very useful).

I agree, using the four jaw is a possibility. I think though Wolfie's pieces may be quite long so do not rely on the jaws pulling it adequately into line. In this case, check with a square off the chuck's face.

The angle plate will though be the best approach once one gets beyond a certain length say three times the chucks jaw length, certainly no more than four times. Don't forget, being square the machining will start off intermittent.

Harold

Hi Wolfie.

Harolds posting jogged my memory and i remembered a little trick that one should always do when squaring up material on a Mill and that is to run an engineers square over the whole piece to ensure that the four sides are square to each other then do the same for the ends to find the highest point on the end and mark with a texta or some machinist blue etc .

This will allow you to set your first cut so it is removing material from the high point and the cutting forces will lessen as it traverses towards the lower portions , if you start at the low point and start cutting the cutter will have to remove more metal as it traverses the along and the cut will deepen .

If the ends are out of square more than say 2mm i would clean up first with a bastard file or small angle grinder .

Another source of info is some of the DVD productions available through Little Machine shop as these are set up on the X2 Mill and i found them quite well made and informative (they may be available through a retailer in the UK but i'm not sure as i'm in Australia and just about anything usefull has to come from overseas and that's where i bought mine.

IAN