In the Mail!

It's official, after talking about it for close to a year now, I finally ordered a 6mm BR reamer for my project that has been sitting on the back burner. I'm not sure exactly what will show up but I ordered a few extras to go along with my reamer. Usually they say it can take up to 8 weeks to get a reamer, but the 6 BR is so popular that you would think that they would be cranking these things out one after the other. I bought the Lapua reamer with the .2704" neck. Not really sure what the lead and angle is, but I'll find out. I should have specified, but they were on sale from PTG and I think I read once upon a time that these are around .090" lead. We'll find out!

No pictures to promote today, but I can throw up another project I picked up in the meantime.

Here's a 1970 CB450 that I'm going to attempt to make a cafe racer out of. Currently not running, but the new kick starter pedal should arrive tomorrow to test it out! I have a couple gas tanks too, but the one I want to use has a couple dents in it. I might just have to use it though because it makes the bike look so much better!

"New" Dunlap "Craftsman" drill press project for my shop!

One of the main items missing from my shop at this time is a decent drill press. Now, due to my space constraints, I'm not left with many options are far as bigger machines go! I ran across someone a while back that posted a neat photograph of a restored South Bend drill press. These are nice little machines and pretty accurate along with being able to get them in a bench top model! I've been keeping an eye out for something, but there isn't much around in the usual places such as Craigslist and eBay. I didn't want to spend much money ether being that I'm still a Grad student after all!

About a week ago I was perusing Craigslist and ran across some poor listing with some bad pictures of a little Dunlap bench top drill press! I wasn't sure what it was exactly, but after doing a little bit of research it turns out that it is a Craftsman private label made by someone else for Sears and they slapped a Dunlap tag on it. most likely an Atlas, but there were a few other manufacturers for this machine as the years went on.

I went to take a look and ended up taking it home for $35! Now that I have it home, I was able to look at it a little further and figure out what was going on because it has a few issues. Cosmetically it's in very nice shape and a good paint job and a little buffing will make this thing look new again. However, the motor does have a funky clicking noise which may be a bad bearing, and the spindle sleeve and spindle drive pulley has been wallowed out!

New project on the lathe! In the coming weeks I'll be taking it all apart and showing how I repair that sleeve on my YouTube Channel! Other than that it is in pretty good shape! Everything is there, the bed is almost perfect and no other parts are broken or missing. I will need to add a on/off switch and maybe a light to this guy!

Keep an eye out in the comming weeks for this repair and the restoration of this little drill press! It's not quite the capacity I was looking for, but it will do the job for now!

Finally in my new basement shop!

Well, I just wanted to tell everyone that I am now in my new basement shop with just about all my tooling. I tried to make it big enough to fit everything, but as usual, it's still too small. I am able to fit everything that I currently have in there, but it doesn't leave much for any new acquisitions. I'll be making a video update on my YouTube channel to show everyone what I have going on.

This is one half of it, and I'll have to grab a photo of the other half. As you can see in the photo, I got myself a new power hack saw which replaced my old green Jefferson saw. More to come on that.

If you look, you can see that I painted the floor too. I used to work in a Diamond Vogel Paint store which is similar to a Sherman Williams store and I learned a lot about what to use, where, and how. I prepped the floor as it should have properly been done, and I painted. The only thing is I used a cheap Dutch Boy porch and floor paint. Needless to say, it's junk! I knew it wouldn't hold up like a good 2 part epoxy would, but I didn't feel like spending $2-300 for this floor. We'll most likely be moving in a couple years and they cheap stuff will get me by. However it already has some scuffs and scrapes in it from very light use! Long story, if you're doing your shop floor and you want it to last, the minimum I would suggest is the Rust-0-leum epoxy products available at most hardware stores. If you want the best, go to a paint store like Sherman, or Diamond Vogel and they can set up up with some amazing stuff! The best stuff we sold when I was there would stand up to brake fluid, and that stuff is nasty! It was designed for airport hangers! Cost about 6-7 years ago was about $150 for 1.5-2 gallons.

If you look in front of my south bend lathe, you can also see an anti-fatigue mat that I found on sale for $5 on a trip back to my hometown. Unfortunately when I went to move it the other day, it pulled up half of the paint along with it.

I have some big plans for 2016 and hope to do at least 2 complete rifle builds! I am extremely busy from now until the middle of April because I have my Part I NBCE Boards. I'll try and get up as much as I can with my channel, but it will be a little hit and miss for the next couple months! I have several videos I want to get done but not enough time! I also plan to upgrade both my computer and editing software to give you guys much better quality videos along with getting one or two more cameras and some mics.