On September 3, 2023, I milled a lathe tool holder, mostly because I just wanted to mill something. Here it is on the mill with a long step cut along it.

A few days later I test-fitted it onto the dovetail of my 250-222 quick-change tool post. I'm pretty happy with this fit.

And here is the finished holder on the lathe, clamping a boring/turning tool with a carbide insert. There's a brass knurled adjuster nut on a threaded stud, and four hex bolts. It came out okay. I think I'll make another one and see if I can do better.

The tailstock die holder was progressing in early October. Unfortunately, I bored the end out too big. Facepalm. It was fixable without starting over, fortunately.

To make up for my mistake, I turned an adapter for the end. I also made it dual size, so it can accommodate larger dies. There was still a bit left to do on it at this point.

Having a multicolor printer is great for stuff like this. I probably should have slowed the print down a bit, and I accidentally used silver rather than white for the sizes, but it's more than good enough for its intended purpose.

Here it is installed next to the lathe's DRO, a dial indicator on a magnetic base, and a bottle of way oil.

Then there's stuff like this. It's a support for holding long, thin things stable in the bore of my lathe. It prints in 20 minutes and cost $0.29 worth of filament. Ordinarily you'd use something called a lathe spider for this, which is a whole project of its own and potentially involves drilling holes in the lathe. This is so easy that I'll just make one whenever I need a different diameter.

I'm also digging just leaving a roll of white in the printer all the time so I can embed text in stuff, like the diameter on this one.

A little lathe upgrade I'd been working on: a linear-scale digital readout for the tailstock, on 3D-printed mounts with a printed clamp collar on the quill. One of those screws is a decoy, hiding the broken tap underneath it.

In December 2024 I printed soft jaws for the lathe chuck out of TPU, a flexible filament that's like a fairly firm rubber. Here's the first version fitted on a chuck jaw.

I added a giant fillet in that corner for the final versions, since that corner was obviously going to fail. Here's the final version.

I wound up not using these because - surprise! - metal chips are hot, and plastic doesn't like that. I'll have to do some in aluminum or copper one of these days.

I picked up a Vevor 6-inch six-jaw self-centering chuck with a D1-4 cam-lock backing plate for just north of $200. It arrived covered in grinding dust and with the burrs left on, so it's getting a few hours of deburring with files and blue shop towels to take it from "done" to "operates smoothly". It's nearly finished; next up is mounting it on the lathe and seeing how accurate it actually is. Updates to follow.

Here it is torn down on the bench: the body, the six jaws, the scroll ring, and the backing plate, with a set of needle files standing by.

Step one was to figure out how to fixture it so I can mill some precision into it. Here's the base upside-down on the mill vise, with a dial indicator reading its surface. I think this will work.

Here it is on the router. It works pretty well - we align it with the side rail using 123 blocks, clamp down the vises, and we have something we can repeatably secure extrusion in.

Here's the design in CAD: two split-clamp blocks, each with a bore and clamp screws, joined by a bar.

And here's the aluminum bracket complete and installed on the Z-axis slide of the plasma table, holding the new machine torch. It was super, super nice using the Bridgeport for this.

Boring the bracket on the mill.

Here are the panel pieces coming off the printer: the front panel with the speed dial, the forward/stop/back rocker switch, and the four-digit LED display, plus a few blank panels.

I was down to my last roll of PETG when I printed this, which was a relief, because I will never use it again. It gave me stringing, voids, and blobbing. (2026 update: PETG is now my preferred material. The problems were likely due to not drying it. Having a better printer now helps, too.)

Holding the finished control box next to the mill and its DRO.

On August 27, 2022 I cleared out the area under the deck so I could move mill parts through it. As you can see, it was a bit of a job.

Attachment point for the chain hoist, installed. I never should have used that eye bolt: a forged eye bolt would have been much better from a load standpoint.

A trivial test of the chain hoist: a bucket.

Several pieces I moved myself, with various hoists. On September 3 I built a gantry (it has its own page) so I could take the top of the mill apart with a chain hoist. Here it is over the mill.

The same gantry from another angle, lifting the ram off the base.

Two stills from a video of the head coming down, in its lifting straps with a wooden bar through them.

The head, in lifting straps and hanging from an engine crane over a plywood sled.

The head being lowered under the deck with the chain hoist.

The table on the lift cart in the driveway, having just come out of the car.

And the scissor-lift cart carrying the table, hanging from the same hoist. It was easier just to lower the whole thing rather than unstrap it from the cart.

And done. And I mean done. I'm paying someone else to move the rest.

In September 2022 I started to clean up the table on my Bridgeport mill. It'll probably take a few sessions, but here's the "before".

The table is lying on the workbench, long and rusty, with its T-slots running down its length.

I was still in "get the mill fully restored" mode, so the next jobs were the upgrades that make it pleasant to use. The first was a digital readout. This is the DRO, still in its wrapper, with its first screen.

And mounted on its arm.

The scales' cables run down the side of the mill.

Next, a power feed for the Z axis, so I don't have to crank a 600 pound knee up and down by hand. This is the mounting ring for it, plasma cut and then drilled and tapped.

The Z power feed, installed and running.

In the summer of 2025 I rearranged the whole basement shop and the mill had to move to a new room. The hydraulic lift cart that made it easy to take the table off appeared to have given up the ghost, but I could still lift things with the shop crane.

The Bridgeport, still in its old spot, with a tub on the table.

The table, lifted with the shop crane.

The table hanging from the crane.

The table on its cart, going through the doorway.

The table in the new room.

The base was the hard part. I started out using a trick where you lift the Bridgeport by cranking the knee down with a board wedged under it, but switched to using a toe jack, which just felt a bit more controlled. With one side tipped up, I put some electrical conduit that I'd cut up underneath it, and I could actually roll it just by pushing on it.

First attempt, using the knee.

Closer.

The base up on the rollers. I can move it easily by myself using a crowbar when it's on these.

The base coming down the hall. A little help from my friend Andrew.

Things went well with Andrew's help, but honestly the whole thing went so well all that did was speed me up a bit. Once it's up on pipes it's easy to move: just stick a crowbar under it and you can lever it around, an inch at a time. Which was great, because I wasn't sure I liked where it was, and it turned out I could move it a few feet by myself.

In the new room, more or less.

And then a second, shorter move, into the corner, on July 13.