Removing nylon plug from carbon fibre tube

[Sam SpoonsParticipant @samspoons83065]

Final update, After much tedious scraping and sanding and three coats of white two pack Polyurethane the mast looks great. I fabricated a new heel plug out of 50mm round Acetal (which did machine nicely John ). I finally gave up on milling the tenon as I could not devise a practical way of holding the workpiece and used hand tools (tenon saw and belt sander) to make it. It's not a neat precision job but it is functional and fit for purpose.

The trampoline racks now look very shabby so they are about to receive some TLC and white paint then I will post a pic of the boat.

 

Thanks for the help and advice guys.

Edited By Sam Spoons on 30/06/2020 12:30:56

[John BaronParticipant @johnbaron31275]

Hi Sam,

Thank you for the update ! It good to know that you have got it sorted, I'm pleased that the Acetal machined well for you, its quite a nice material to use for things like nuts for backlash free lead screws, collars and those sort of things.

The trick to holding round objects on the mill is "V" blocks assuming that you don't have a three jaw chuck that you can use.

[Sam SpoonsParticipant @samspoons83065]

I was planning to mill on the Boxford but don't have a vertical slide. I did improvise to mill a 3mm slot down the length of a piece of 16mm aluminium round by mounting the bar in a tool holder on my QCTP. Hight adjustable and it worked a treat (It's not cosmetically perfect but does the job I designed it for). I was contemplating making some hardwood V blocks but in the end I decided to just stick it in the bench vice and cut it by hand.

Edited By Sam Spoons on 30/06/2020 15:29:23

[John BaronParticipant @johnbaron31275]

Hi Sam,

"V" blocks can be worth their weight in… well you know what I mean.

The technique that I would have used is some long bolts into "T" nuts on the crosslide packed up the "V" block till I got the height I wanted and then a flat bar on top to clamp the whole lot down. Probably another flat bar behind to stop things twisting under cutting pressure. Then either mill two slots and do as you have done cut the scrap off with a saw, or used a fly cutter to take the waste off.

But that is all academic now. Looking forward to seeing your pictures.

[Sam SpoonsParticipant @samspoons83065]

Yeah I'd pretty much arrived at something like that. The Boxford topside only has a single large tee slot for the tool post so not ideal for that purpose, I did contemplate taking the topside off and drilling and tapping some fixing holes in the cross slide but, in the end, I decided using hand tools made more sense.

I have bought a collect chuck and some milling cutters for the future (and used them on the other job, a 'boat breaker' rigging tensioner) so spent far more than I've saved to date but we need the toys so why not.

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