Well things are slowly moving. In Fla we normally do not plan to heat the shop area so. At any rate in my case I used a piece of Harbor Freight \"scrap\" to start working on the pair of Brass nuts and one of the Brass nose pieces. Have it long enough and threaded inside now I need to cut the nuts apart and start shaping the nose piece to a shape that I like. The scrap was the remains of a two piece Brass punch and drift set I bought a long time ago. I\'m using a Harbor Freight lathe and learning more and more about it as I go on. I\'ve always used my Sherline lathe and mill for most of my projects in the past. One of the things that I did not have on the Sherline lathe was an auto feed. The HF lathe has one and boy does that help save the hands. Wish my big mill had an auto feed. Someday cnc the mill skip auto feed. Someday.
Next I chucked up a used barrel (more scrap) that I got and found that if I want to use the live center then I can only work on cutting down about 4.75 inches of barrel to start with. After that I guess that I\'ll be removing the tail stock and pushing a few inches through the headstock at a time to get it cut down. My goal is to follow our lead guy, also has a small HF lathe. He cut his barrels down to length (little left for adjusting later) and did a dia of .6 note I did not state .60 or .600, it\'s rough it in time using these small mills. Our next planned step is to use our other friends shop in which he has a nice (well used, but) South Bend 24 inch lathe for the finally step down. Then I think that I\'ll be able to state .50 don\'t think I\'ll try to call a .500 but we will see. I\'m not sure if he has a roller tipped stead rest or not.
Stay Warm if your in the cold areas. Our area is forecast for 80 over the weekend. Better than the 2 to 3 inches of snow that our son just had a few miles North of Atlanta, Ga. The school where he teaches at closed mid day Tuesday and will not open till Monday. I lived in Minnesota for a few years takes a lot more than that before you hear the words \"Snow Day\".
Later 42rocker
