I've made a few, with a rotary table on my mill, but milling off 0.9" of steel, by going round-and-round, takes forever. Anybody got a speedier way to do it?

Yes I know Talley makes/sells them but I like to use the pre-64 bases from Dakota, so I need to make one to match. Thanks

Or do what Purdey did? And just braze the block that the swivel attaches to to the barrel and forget all about the band?

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pini...78ed59e9580ae37c.jpg

Well, I do them in the rotary in a 4 jaw and offset the material. I punch the center hole with a drill and drop a chucking reamer through it for size. Or a boring head if its an odd ball. Then I punch two roughing cuts on either side of the stud with a 3/8ths carbide slot mill and on the last one, I just climb mill the outer perimeter with the rotary. Very noisy and it does take about 15 or 20 minutes each if I'm tooled up and doing a few. A horizontal machine with a form cutter would be faster because you could cut a blank a foot or two long and then just part off what you need to make one, I suppose. But, me-no-got-him.

sling swivel band by Rod Henrickson, on Flickr

Re: Purdey -- A little hesitant to run a barrel up to red-hot for brazing. I think if it wasn't warped/bent before that would do it.

Thanks Rod - I'll have to think through the offset but it seem to cut down on the milling involved.

quote:

Anybody got a speedier way to do it?

Yep- after I made my first, I bought the next one from Midway.........

I used nearly exactly the technique Rod describes.
Slow and tedious on a small machine, hence the purchase.

I do the entire outer perimeter in one big CHOMP, in the rotary. There really isn't a lot of material left after the two plunge cuts with the slot mill. It's a slow turn, maybe a minute or two. Because you are cutting 3/4 inch on the side of the end mill it does set up some rather annoying racket. The time waster is setup and changing tools. A CNC would take all of the fun out of it. But if I did it on a CNC I would be cutting a foot long piece of material at a time between centers on the bottom of an end mill, advancing the dividing head 2-1/2 minutes at a crack and going like a bat-out-of-hell. Then part off bits as I needed it and bore the hole in the lathe. Far to many cuts to do that in a single stage machine.

quote:

Originally posted by troutcreeks:
I've made a few, with a rotary table on my mill, but milling off 0.9" of steel, by going round-and-round, takes forever. Anybody got a speedier way to do it?

Yes I know Talley makes/sells them but I like to use the pre-64 bases from Dakota, so I need to make one to match. Thanks

Cnc

Thanks again Rod. My mill doesn't have the beef to make a one-pass 3/4" side cut but it turned out fine. It needs some clean up.

Yeah, offsetting the material so that you can remove the bulk with a couple of plunge cuts kind of takes all the fun out of it. I thought about it a bit after I mentioned it and I always start my cut on the left hand side, which means I was milling conventionally. That's probably what I did to break some of the chatter and cut down the noise. (it's still a really noisy operation) I think I probably climb milled back around to finish. It seems to me I use 3/8ths carbide at about 700 or 800 RPM. Much to slow for that cutter, but for some reason it was a necessity.

I should write all this shit down somewhere so I don't have to re-think and re-learn it every time I do it.
I guess I'm just to damned lazy to be even more lazy than I am!

I could water jet these out of steel plate and deliver a 4x8 sheet of them to anyone who wants. Just a little polishing needed. And drilling a little hole.