Been just doing run of the mill pens and suchlike amongst some sorting out wood stocks so little to show for the shed time, but thought these items sorted today may be of interest.
A new Tool Rest,
Recently modified my lathe Saddle to get a smoother adjustment but this had the negative effect of limiting how close to a spindle my existing rests would reach.
Recent batch of Pens finally convinced me I needed to do something about the problem, so out with the scrap farm machinery drive shaft I'd been donated for something to turn the rest stem from and found enough steel strip offcuts in the bin and a bit of stainless rod picked up from an Ikea scrap bin some years ago and set shaping them into something like the form needed.
The realisation that of all the heat needed to silver solder it all together was probably more than was in my gas cylinders I resorted to bolting the main pieces together with 6mm stainless countersunks.
The top rail posed a fixing problem, sorted by CA gluing it in place whilst I drilled through the ends into the main horizontal member and secured it by tapping 4mm and connecting with screws bonded in place with CA.
The other little project was to re-handle a Bowl Gouge, I have a couple of steels that I handled myself, but in use I've found that the value for money long steels with a standard 70-80mm inset in the handles were too long for me in use to be comfortable so needed re-handling.
To this end I turned up a location and adjustment collar insert from some aluminium and deep bored a new handle to allow the steel to be 'lost' in the handle down to a tool length that feels more manageable. Only managed to do the one, there's another on the rack I need to treat the same way.
All brought to a head because my favourite go to Hamlet (on the right in the rack pic.) is getting rather short after some 9 yrs. use.
The length of the steel as it would appear in a normal handle fixing.
With most of the surplus stowed away in handle.
And sitting on the Rack with the next one to receive the same treatment sitting two places to the right.