Yup, let's do it.

We've talked out the details years now, plenty long enough. I'm sick of putting up with the LEE frustrations (poor Cpk on cavities, missed dimensions and all the rest of it).

I'm also sick of the "collect 20 mold orders" merry-go-round, the $60 plus cost and all the rest of the honcho nonsense. Lee is only going to go up in cost and Mountain Dan is no longer cutting molds (still pending completing his shop, etc) We got a mold building lack right now.

It is possible to do this. Dial over to:

http://www.desktopcnc.com/mill_table.htm

eyeball the far right column for price, identify the wild spread of costs and CNC abilities, then run down to the very bottom and note that Tormach sells a serious all cast iron ways machine (over a thousand pounds of iron) for less than $7,000. Eyeball further at:

http://www.desktopcnc.com/mfg_pages/tormach.htm

and follow the clicks to the home page, etc. Check it all out.

Yes, Virginia -- even I can figure out how to do it by throwing $8-10,000 of money at it. But I'm not the first one to try to figure this out -- any other of you other miscreants want to chip about potential used tooling they know of? CNC mods to existing already owned tooling? Other ways to approach this using a lathe or a mill?

Some folks have actually done the "make a burr and use a dual action vise to close the mold cavities around it" but generally only for single cavity jobs. I'm talking 4-6-10 cavities, enough cavities to be meaningful.

As to how to tool it or program it -- you can go simple with the tooling if you have a really nice CNC machine to start with. Tooling has to become more complex the simpler the mold cutting machine becomes -- a full cherry ground to perfect size goes with very simple equipment.

My thought is a generic form cherry, intendeded to be swung in a simple 2D CNC circle giving you a variable diameter bullet (at many incremental diameters and lengths) with exactly the same outer shape --- but seeming to be functionally different as it goes up in diameter from 30 caliber up to 50 caliber).

Make one generic cherry, prove out the idea. Next cherry is built to next new idea (but it is swing expandable as well). After a while you would have a whole world of forms/ranges that you could cut quickly enough as needed.

Mold blocks -- use the KISS principle. Take a standard bar stock size of decent grade aluminum and cut it to length in a Black & Decker Miter saw with a length stop. Two passes on one side with a carbide dado blade (wobble style) on a table saw to make the groove for the Lee handles. Drill and tap in a dedicated small cheap drill press fixture to put in the handle holding screw.

Now, mold face locating features. My KISS pick would be larger diameter dowel pins than LEE uses, put in in the off-set LEE fashion. I'd put two in from each end (low to the bottom side of the blocks) and two in vertically from the bottom out at the ends. Then, if I was going to make a real "infinity" long lasting mold out of it, I'd sacrifice a set of $13 Lee handles and glue the handles to the blocks after I had the mold working well, such that the better grade aluminum base material never saw any off-set open and close forces from the pins (the LEE handle hinge would control the open and close off-set forces to practially zero).

Lee or Mountain Dan "steel on steel" alignment pins are very nice, but they raise the cost of mold blocks quite a bit and they can actually become a source of mold block mis-alignment if they are hit accidentally or get rusted up and don't want to engage completely. (ask Joe about the Frankie #1 mold if you need an real-world example)

Long length engagement large surface solid roll pins would tend to be monkey proof and be simple & cheap to install accurately and easy to use over a very significant mold lifespan.

Does this all make sense to you so far?

Oldfeller

Yo Kelly,

I don't know if you followed the thread where I cut a three cavity mould on my lathe. It was for a 100 gr truncated cone nose single lube groove to use in my 30 Lugers, 7.62x25 Tokarevs, and 32acp.

I used the steel alignment dowels locating inside steel tubes opposite of them. I cut the blocks first, everything, the cavities were done last. Anyways after cutting the blocks and squaring them I installed the dowel pins and tubes, then cut the cavities. This insured the cavities halves lined up correctly when the blocks were closed, and they did.

The main problem was making a cutter tool that would withstand the pressure. The smaller the diameter of the bullet the more critical the quality of the steel for that tool become. There were other issues, but I was able to overcome them and made quite a few moulds for myself.

On another note, I had gotten pretty far with one of the major mould makers (Like RCBS LYMAN SAECO)to doing group moulds for the forum, but when things went sour on the CB for me, I said the hell with it and them, let them do it themselves.

Joe

Joe -
Interesting thing you have at the bottom of the page. Yes, 65.151.193.40 IS my IP address, yes I'm on windows and IE6 (no great trick). But who is this Mr. Anderson that has a problem with authority?

Tim K

Kelly -

As far as it goes, it's ok. You're likely to be one of the few that understands what CPK is.

As one who bought a mill and a couple of lathes JUST for making moulds, I can say from experince that $60 for a mould with all of the hassles and ideosyncracies that come with it is CHEAP.

But, I agree with the individual choices of a vs. b that you've listed.

SO, who's going to start up the business of making custom moulds for $25 bucks each ?

Not me. I'll be happy to modify modify and modify till I get the features I want. To do it for hire? You couldn't pay me. (Of course with my skills at the present level you wouldn't want to anyway.)

)

I'm not talking about doing it for hire, I'm talking about developing a method such that it could be done for the fun of it. That's the only reason I do stuff, if it wasn't fun I wouldn't do it.

Take the mold blocks, Joe has done it using alignment dowel pins, LEE does it and it works OK (maybe not elegant, but certainly effective and cheap. I'd bet it naturally tends to cause the block faces to hang apart from each other a few thousands of an inch under normal hand clamping pressure (remember when the precison carbide drill went in to drill those precisely sized but slightly off parting line center holes, the mold blocks were clamped up HARD in a strong vise -- your hand pressure isn't on the same order of magnitude as that.

Lee always has a thou to a thou and a half of out of round in their cavities because of this effect. But having some clearance between the blocks is to the good in my mind as it provides the needed air venting when casting. Trick is to clamp the molds as lightly as possible when cutting the cavities or else to feeler gage a mold blocks natural clearance when hand clamped, then shim it with foil that exact amount when hard clamping it to cut the cavities into it.

Air venting IS needed, but I don't think knurling on mold faces is needed. Veral used to do a skim cut on his blocks between his two cavities, but I think a thou or so of face to face clearance (naturally provided by the lightly hand held alignment pins) would be just as good.

Top plates could be steel or aluminum, I think a hard grade of flat strip aluminum stock would be just as good as mild steel. I'd make it wider than the top of the mold blocks so I could put a stop screw head in it so it would rotate on the shoulder bolt and stop on the screw head.

Same milling set up that cut the cavities could have 2 last operations done before unclamping the blocks -- face off the top of the blocks, screw down a top plate run it over until the screw head hits, then come down on it with a destayco toe clamp and then mill the "V" holes for the sprues (you already have an XYZ set up that is right for correct center location to each cavity.

Some small bullets could have 8-10 small cavities (with matching overlapping sprue holes). Large caliber bullets would have fewer (6) holes. That is assuming you limited yourself to the same length of mold block as a standard LEE 6 holer mold block.

Remove the top plate by removing the screw, lifting it off vertically as you will have protruding burrs from the "V" cuts that will have to be flat paper lapped off before any sliding action is done.

If you used steel, you could heat blue the metal or black oxide it. Aluminum could be annodized. Steel might actually be better, since someone would forget to preheat their mold enough for hand opening and would be beating on the sprue plate with a stick of some kind.

Yeah, I understand the economics, for a mold we wanted we could split the $100 programming fee cheaper than getting into all of this. But how many programming fees have we already spent ??? How many more will we spend?

Oldfeller

quote:

Originally posted by trk:
Joe -
Interesting thing you have at the bottom of the page. Yes, 65.151.193.40 IS my IP address, yes I'm on windows and IE6 (no great trick). But who is this Mr. Anderson that has a problem with authority?

Tim K

Tim
I agree no great trick, if it was I wouldn't know it.

Joe

I think the idea of running the profile tool in a circle is worth looking into more. I wonder how much actual control we could have? could we cut one mold .452 and the next .453?
That would make a group order that much easier. With some guys arguing for .452 and another wanting .456. I think that may have got a little carried away on the .375 Buckshot that turned out at .386". It's a nice looking bullet, but what can we shoot it in?

Have you tried a Dado blade on a table saw for cutting a slot in Aluminum?!?! I have used a hand held battery powered saw with 4" carbide blade to cut Elec conduit and up to 1/4" Steel plate. I'm just imagineing the Dado comeing apart in a very spectacular fashion.

The handle slot in the Lee 6 cav blocks looks like it was maybe extruded that way?

My stepper control stuff is still taken apart, but I do have most of the new parts sitting next to each other.

Lars45

I've make a wood fixture to hold my blocks when cutting the slot for the handles on my table saw.
I have a dado blade, but to tell you the truth, I believe that would be the blade trying to remove or grab too much aluminum at one time...after all it's not like wood. I particularly don't like things flying at me spun off the blade. I use a wax lube on the blade too.

I worked for more then one major aluminum and glass construction companies in my past years and learned about about cutting the stuff. We use to prefab the large rectangular tubes and cut them on a radial saw. We found that you pulled the saw back towards you through the piece, rather then pull the saw out, insert the piece, then try to go forward through it. I haven't tried this on a table saw yet, but on the radial arm saw it makes for a nicer cut and the blade doesn't grab the aluminum.

Joe

Ok, you convinced me on the dado blade. How about a carbide router bit in a router table, multiple passes (one pass from right side, one pass from left side, bit slightly smaller than slot). I know this will work on aluminum at a rapid removal rate, I've done it.

Go to the same desktopcnc place and look at the CNC lathes and the 4th axis attachment for the nice $6000 CNC mill I mentioned.

Ok, now take a carbide milling cutter with say 5 flutes (or some other odd number) so that it will be just about 15-20 thousandths smaller than your desired minimum cavity size after you finish grinding on it.

Using your CNC rotation to rotate that carbide mill and path a diamond grinding point in the mill head at high speed (using very very light cuts, put the profile of your nose on the end of the cutter, put the land top rider (BR section) in place to be at least .002" smaller than the band diameter of your form (hey Lar, you can put your trademark BR taper in there at any rate you want, starting it where you want).

Program in your band top to lube groove bottom difference such that is always at least slightly deeper than your final gas check shank will be. That way you always have something to cut straight to put your gas check shank upon.

Mind you, you can screw up on the cutter and just go a little deeper to fix it. Try try again until it is right. Ditto for sharpening.

You are after a relationship of nose form to land top rider section to band diameter. These never change, rifling is always about .003" tall when new and always a thou tall even if worn at the throat. You have a fixed relationship between BR nose and main driver bands no matter what caliber (unless you are talking Steyr or K-31 of course)

Small carbide milling cutters (or in the beginning, high speed steel while you are learning how) are not that expensive. Diamond points really aren't that bad either. Diamond grit points are funny, HSS simply isn't very hard to them.

Now for the rocket science part of the scenario -- if you got the mill and the 4th axis rotator, you could path down a straight flute edge using your point in a linear fashion (with up-downs) to get your form. Offset the rounded edge spinning point slightly to the non-cutting side of the flute (say an extra degree of rotation) and you will get a sharp cutting edge on the flute.

Once you have your generic cutter, you are good to cut cavities. Do you get the impression you might be able to make a cutter to a stored CNC program (and be able to modify it at will?)

Does this make sense?

A few observations.

There is a wealth of experience and a good variety of perspectives of folks participating. AND we've been through enough life to minimize the hurdles of overcoming egos.

My interest in this is to produce a setup in MY shop to make quality moulds for - who else - ME.

In the process of doing so, there can be produced enough documentation that anyone could economically duplicate the setup. There may well be others that will come up with several alternative methods of doing particular functions - that's more than ok too.

The bottom line is, if this is going to be more than an academic pursuit, that I (and I assume serveral other folks) end up with either functional setups for personal mould making and/or some of us end up with some of the products of the setup.

We talk about accuracy, repeatablity and all the other measurement techniques of manufacturing quality - these are the guarentees of the product's quality.

Since my interest is long-term and real-life, I expect to finish this project in a year or two.

I can deal with about one thing at a time. So, the place to start is with the material for the moulds, clamping/fixturing and methods of alignment of the two pieces.

First comes theory, then building the equipment and last proving the theory.

That's my level of interest. OK, set a goal produce a couple of dozen mould blocks by, say, end of spring.

Comments?

I agree Tim, also throwing in that it isn't necessary for each of us to do every item -- we could share. If I could CNC grind you a form cutter, that would be one headache and expense you wouldn't have to deal with.

Kelly

Mould materials.

Making the assumption (classic definition) that small volume production would not justify special extrusions, and that standard sizes could be machined.

Aluminum?
What flavor?
1x1" and/or 1x2" (would that be sufficient for most purposes?)

Although I've become more of a fan of shorter bullets of late, still I guess that some large caliber bullets for the .45's would be longer than an inch.

You are going to lose some depth with the alignment pins if you put them in lengthwise LEE style, so if you were really "genericising" you'd probably want the 1x2 stock.

Now, for those who don't have two axis CNC action but do have a mill, check this thought out for swinging that form cutter in a very controlled fashion. You'd only be cutting with the outer flute, so you'd have to index it to get a sharp edge periodically.

http://www.criterionmachineworks.com/

Oldfeller

I'm not an expert on machining metals. With that said I think a router bit speed would be much high for aluminum. Even on a table saw blade the aluminum clings to the teeth, thus why I use a waxy lube. I'd much rather have a piece shot off a table saw blade then a router bit. Neither would be preferable. I'm trying to remember the size of stock I used when I purchased my aluminum bar stock from Enco for experimentation. Something like 1 1/2 by 3/4. Oldfeller is right about the dowel pins eating ups some nose depth. By the way that aluminum was in the 6000...of the top of my head something like 6016 or 6062. Definitely harder then Lee's crap.

Joe

Tim, I just measured a LEE six holer. Each half of the mold blocks is only 1 1/8" tall and right at 3/4" wide.

What stock sizes do we have that are 3/4" thick? I mean LEE cuts .458 slugs into that width and to me I don't think they need their handle groove cuts to be quite that deep as they have them now (I don't care if my screw head sticks out a little).

Another point is that LEE handles are intended to grip a distance of 3/4" to one inch inside edge of the grip arms to inside edge of grip arm.

If you had a 1" thick block you'd be grooving it pretty deep just to get the handles to work.

Take out a six holer block and a handle set and see if I am making any sense about this.

Kelly

OldKellyfeller--At one time you mentioned using the material electric motor brushes are made of for making blocks. I was skeptical of the idea and was wondering if you ever did go past the thought of doing it? Any actual attempts?

I've looked into this for years, as I figured it would be a good side business. I was planning on doing something similar to what dan aka mountain molds did.

What I'd decided is for the part time guy who doesn't want to invest thousands into equipment, you need to forget about making your own blocks. Simply look at the number of machining opperations, and you realize most of the time making a mold is cutting the blocks to size, maching alimgnment means, machining a method to attach handles, machining for the sprue plate.

That leaves us with merely having to cut the cavity in the mold, which can be done with one machine tool, and a very, very useful tool that is, a lathe. Pick the donor mold of your choice, Lee's are cheap and come with handles. Drill out the peening, and let the pins fall out to free the mold block. Make up the tooling to hold the mold in place on the lathe, and IMHO the best method is a CNC controller as you can easily vary the cavity profile without the time and expense of cherries.

Long story short, it's easy to complain about the cost of custom molds and the expense, but when you put your own $'s and hours on the line, it is very cheap in comparison.

Sorry to here Mountain Molds is temporarily out of the market, as they were by far the best deal out there, and we are much the poorer for not having them as an option.

Ballisticast will do some custom molds, expensive, but they make a superb mold.

quote:

Picture of Paul H

From what I 've hear Dan is back in business, he's site going and he's starting up.

Joe

Ray, I made just one carbon block mold up that made up 7mm form slugs. The idea worked, but I had to admit waiting for the metal to solidify was kinda a like watching paint dry -- very slow to jell and very very slow to fully solidify (crystalization/transformation point). Carbon block material was simply too good of an insulator.

For homemade uses, aluminum is better. Is easy to machine and jells a bullet quickly, doesn't rust -- it has some advantages.

==================

Paul,

I have bought a few unfinished blocks from LEE before, unassembled to play with. They cost too much, really. Best shot is to make up a bar stock block set that uses a standard handle from somewhere. If we could find the source that LEE uses for their 2 cavity pistol block handles, I bet we could cook up a simple 4 cavity block that used that same inexpensive thin handle set. That way the handle could be glued in place to provide the primary pin closure alignment since a handle set would come with each mold block.

=================================

Joe, I'm glad that Mountain Dan is back in business again. He does a good job of what he is willing to do and it is reasonably priced for what is available now. However, I tend to think like Tim -- this is a doable thing for the toolish among us. I'm not interested in doing it for money, I am interested in doing it for the fun of it.

=============================

Tim and Lar,

Does it have to be a six banger? How about smaller/lighter four banger using the LEE pistol block handles? This size block would do the lathe guys better since it would be less unweildy to put on a face plate and turn.

Source for 3/4" thick bar stock cold rolled (fine finished) 2024-T351 is Alcoa Aluminum or any of their stocking distributors.

http://www.alcoa.com/gcfp/catalog/pdf/cold_size_rect.pdf

you could do 1.5 deep blocks and lose a quarter inch to the pins and still get the 1.250" bullet lengths we have been getting out of LEE. Or you could go with the 2" deep blocks and put some really substantial pins in it and have even more bullet length if you wanted to use it.

I seem to tend to like this 3/4 by 2 stock size. Here is a $2,500 CNC lathe that might be able to handle this size of block on a pure CNC turn basis using a single point tool. Price is "better" on this idea, anyway. (second from the top, the MAXNC with the 6" swing)

http://www.desktopcnc.com/sm_lathe_table.htm

Kelly

You don't have to get blank lee dies, just get a mold with a cavity that is smaller than you are wanting to cut, and go from there.

We all have varying amounts of free time, so such projects have varying amounts of appeal. I haven't had time to cast for nearly a year, so you can see from my viewpoint, making molds is even less appealing.

Paul,

I picked that up immediately as to what you meant about getting the Lee mould in a smaller diameter bullet. In fact I was going to try that with a discarded mould I have and never have gotten around to it. They are cheap esp at dealer cost and already finished, just cut your cavity. Yup cheap.

Joe

Oldkelly--I never even thought about them starting liquid. Guess I just thought it was a composite. Tell me more about the process.

Since oldfeller mentioned the "too good" heat retaining qualities of that carbon block, what I'm about to mention might not be good either. Okay here goes.

How about you cut the bullet you want out of steel or whatever metal you want to use and use it as a blank to mold ceramic blocks around? If you could keep the faces flat on the halves, why wouldn't it work? You could even mold in your dowel pins and all. I know, it couldn't be that easy. Wish it was though. Cut the bullet, put it in a fixture that will hold it in the ceramic mix, cure it in a kiln, zip you're done.

Joe

Thermal shock, Joe. I crack coffee mugs in the microwave occasionally because of it. 650 degree lead might do it even quicker. Ceramic doesn't do temperature change well.

Uncle Ray, you are funn'n me again. Tell you what, when I get my rig done I'll make you a Brittany pellet mold just so's you can see she really will fly with her smaller pointys facing forward.

The Deadly Laziness Factor: For the initial purchase cost of the least cost rig identified so far I could buy me 28 Mountain Molds and not have to make a single chip or spray a single ounce of coolant. Question is: am I a caster/shooter now or am I a machinist tinkerer?

mmmmmmmm .... (but Dan won't make weird stuff)

The Buckshot Factor -- you spend 2x your original machine tool purchase price in tooling & gizmos as you go about doing the things you plan to do.

Kelly

Oldfeller--Actually I wasnt funning you. I never even gave it consideration that it was a material that was molded. Can you make that mold in 5mm? Starmetal--that ceramic mold you are making,I was wondering do you knit the apron you wear when using it?

Ray, it wasn't molded like you and Joe are talking about, it was a refractory EG grade brush material.

Take powdered graphite, carbon, some copper and other sinterable metals and make a powder mix. Compress it under hundreds of tons of pressure to make a block. Bake the block at white heat for 72 hours to sinter (fuse) all the materials into a refractory solid.

Cut the big block up into little blocks using a carbide tipped band saw. Grind the smaller blocks (intended to be tow motor brushes) to perfect rectangular shapes prior to installing the shunt wires. (take some at that stage of manufacturing)

Take two of these brush blocks and machine in your cavity with a carbide bit (in this case a simple slug form).

The problem was the lead was very slow to solidify after it was poured into the cavity because the brush block material is an insulator and didn't suck the heat out of the lead very fast. Aluminum is easier to machine and sucks heat very well compared to carbon blocks.

Kelly

Thanks for the explanation. Darn I was thinking the blocks were slow to dry---not the lead.

oldfeller,

Have you seen this discussion on the home shop machinist site talking about mould cutting? I haven't read much of it but it might be of interest.

http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/showthread.php?t=22196

Mark

Mark, I sympathize with the fellow trying to keep deflection from screwing up his deep cuts.

Doug at LEE did us a 1.25" deep 6.5 mold (100 of them). He broke his cutter three times and had to re-set up each time.

Defection was a killer, especially when his cutter got dull and suddenly wanted to cut undersize.

Now you see why we talked about making a full length form tool (undersized cherry) that could be rotated as a milling cutter and then pathed in a circle out to the necessary diameter for the particular caliber bullet being cut.

All deflection would be inwards and if we let the cutter re-path the final circle enough times it would tend to cut the correct final size. Plus, a form ground straight flute mill would have mulitple cutters which would mean less chance of the loss of a single edge causing a complete failure (as happens with single point tools).

Kelly

Kelly,

When I made a form tool of the bullet I wanted, and we're talking a 30 caliber pistol bullet, which the tool for it would be amazing short. Yet it deflected and to boot, when I couldn't hardened the tool properly it bent. I ended up cutting one from a very hard drill shank, had to use a carbide cutter to cut it. It worked the best for me. Even though I had it sharp enough to shave the top of my finger nail, I still had problems cutting that aluminum. Buckshot said that when it was cutting right that little silver slivers of aluminum would be floating through the air. He was right, they did. He also said for aluminum, that WD 40 was decent cutting lube. What amazed him was when I told him that NO lube worked the best in my case. I don't know what lube did in my case, but it just loaded up the bit with powdered aluminum instead of cutting it, it was like it scraped it. Maybe I'll get some more aluminum stock for my project and maybe get a grinder attachment for my lathe and grind me a real hard bullet form tool out of some very hard steel.

Joe

We use a spray bottle of alcohol to lube aluminum turnings here at work - does VERY well.

quote:

Originally posted by trk:
We use a spray bottle of alcohol to lube aluminum turnings here at work - does VERY well.

Tim,

You know, I discovered that accidentally by cleaning the other failed lubricate off the tool and mould with alcohol.

Joe

So in looking around I find that 2024 T3 aluminum (right much hardened) is recommended. Haven't figured out availability in my area yet, 6061-T6 is commonly available.

Looking at 3/4 x 1 or x 1-1/4 or x 1-1/2 in 12 foot lengths.

Starting with aluminum because of ease of machining; will move to iron when I've got my feet on the ground.

Next comes cutting to lenghts - hmmm - 12" or so lengths to cut features (grooves for handles) or cut to near finished size?

Tim,

I was looking at 3/4 by 2 bar stock as you can buy it from stock from most distributors.

Came up with a snag though -- most bar stock you can find (6061) has 1/16 rounded corners. This means the top of the assembled blocks will require milling to remove the radius area at the parting line.

Caused me to think about buying plate stock and specifying I wanted it cut at the distributor to 2" width (or less). Tolerance they would hold on cut job was 1/16 plus or minus. Price on material was same, cut charge was extra.

Thought on cut plate would be you would match the best cut edges together to be the top of the blocks, thus minimizing clean up machining. But then you'd still have to clean up the bottom & sides to sit right in your holding fixture.

I have not found a source yet for the square cornered hard Alcoa material. It may be a mill run spec material.

http://www.alcoa.com/gcfp/catalog/pdf/cold_size_rect.pdf

Kelly

Well being I use my faceplate on my lathe to cut my molds I just milled the blocks flat and got rid of the rounded corners. My faceplate is true so I milled them pretty flat.

I talked to my local machine shop - they give me their price on metal - couldn't get the 2024 so I ordered a 12' length of 6061-T6. Under $52. Next step is to build a fixture for the chop saw to cut some standard length pieces and build a fixture plate for milling them. Metal should get here next week sometime.

http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cfm?pid=1177&step=4&showunits=inches

I've ordered from these guys before.
They have 3/4 x 1" 6061 T6 6' length for $21.35 or $4.32/ ft.

Big question on cutting Aluminum on the chop saw. What if your steel dust gets collected on the sheild and rusts, Iron Oxide, then add Aluminum and heat with sparks... Isn't this something like the recipie for thermite? The stuff they used to mixup to weld rail road track together way out in the bush?

I'd like to get a band saw to cut the pieces, but my garage is too full.

I ordered 3/4x1-1/2. Online's price for two 6'ers would be about $64 plus shipping, so I think I did ok locally (I know the folks there well).

Since I use the chop saw for other uses it gets cleaned between uses - should be no incendiary threat. I'd thought of using my band saw, but I think I can get a more accurate cut with the chop saw as the metal will be clamped.

Looking at the Lee 6 holer - it looks like a 5/16 groove down each side and 5/16 OD bullet shaped locators on each end.

Plan (initially) is to cut 4 three foot sections to make handling easy, and cut the grooves - good job for horizontal mill if I had one. Hmmmm.

quote:

Joe -
Interesting thing you have at the bottom of the page. Yes, 65.151.193.40 IS my IP address, yes I'm on windows and IE6 (no great trick). But who is this Mr. Anderson that has a problem with authority?

trk if you want to get rid of it use a firewall or Mozilla Firefox.
In firefox click on the image and then click on block image from danasoft-it gets the flick.
Cheers