Tapers

[WolfieParticipant @wolfie]

OK next round of silly questions

 

I want to make some tommy bars for a couple of things. Now as it stands they appear to be tapered so they don’t fall out again.

 

Now how do I go about that? I know you can make a taper with a taper reamer but to what diameter do you drill the pilot hole, presumably the smaller diameter?

 

And how do I taper the bar, in one case its quite small. Doing it in my lathe seems like a bit of overkill.

[WolfieParticipant @wolfie]

[David LittlewoodParticipant @davidlittlewood51847]

You can get taper pins up to a quite respectable size, and these are made with the same taper as the taper pin reamers (though be aware that the taper is slightly different for metric and imperial ones). I used taper pins in this way to make handles on my pillartool and VDH – no way was I going to spend half a lifetime making ball handles for the thing!

 

David

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

You can also just use a good fitting drilled or reamed hole and knurl the centre section of your chosen bar, this increases the dia slightly making it a tight fit in the hole.

 

j

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

For non-critical things, like a clamp for the drilling table, a centre punch will raise enough of a bump to stop a tommy bar falling trough a well fitting hole.

 

Neil

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