Grease Caps - Machining

To machine up the castings, first I had to do some things. I needed something to hold the bit. I had made a boring bar for boring out the headstock and tail stock for the Gingery lathe, so I modified that to fit into my lantern post. Then I had to grind up a bit.

I bored out the inside to the ID of the thread and cut a relief at the back of the thread. I also cut a small section at the beginning of the thread that was the OD of the thread. I then spent 4 hours on Sunday trying to figure out the change gears. I had to make a couple of bushings to get everything to work.

I set up my newly made indicator holder so that when the bit was in the middle of the relief at the back of the thread, the needle was at zero. I probably didn't need it, I could hear when it stopped cutting, but I wanted some extra insurance.

I had watched some videos on Youtube to get the setup and order of operations down. The actual cutting was pretty simple. I kept adjusting the compound slide feed with each pass until it just touched the OD that I had machined at the beginning of the thread. Now I have to change the change gears back so I can cut the OD of the part. I wanted to cut a male thread gauge, but I didn't have any stock around. After I cut the OD of the part, I tried it on the truck and see how good a job I did.

It fit!

After I verified that it worked, I did a quick polish job. It's not perfect, but this was a practice piece.