David J. Gingery (Building your own tools)

By jrw159

Date 04-13-2008 19:41

I can't say that I do, but I want to. It sound very interesting and fun. I will be following this one closely.

jrw

By DaveBoyer (*****)

Date 04-14-2008 04:02

   I have not seen His books but I offer the following comments:

   1) Casting large iron or steel parts in a home foundry is a rather ambitious project.

   2) Finishing these castings into usable machine tool parts with chissles, files & scrapers while not impossible takes astronomical ammounts of time and considerable skill.

   3) Used machine tools are readily available and comparitively inexpensive due to the demise of Our industrial base. These are real machine tools, designed and manufactured by companies that perfected them over many years, homebuilt tools cannot come close.

   4) Comparitively simple equipment like the sheetmetal brake MIGHT be cost effective as a home built for casual use.

By jrw159

Date 04-14-2008 17:57 Edited 04-14-2008 18:13

http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/series/index.html
Tom,
Here is the link to the website.

Dave,
While I think that for the most part you are correct, look at the site. The home foundry is said to be large enough to use for making all the parts needed to be cast, of course I may have missed or missread this. You are very correct that it is not the advisable way to make your equipment. It is so readily available at a fraction of the cost, let alone the time involved.

Consider this though, what a great Father and Son project to experiance bonding time with ones child and the memorys the resulting working equipment would provide. As well as passed on to other generations. I am 37 and have a 16 year old and a 4 year old, both boys. My 16 year old son already took his first welding class in high school, and looking forward for the next. I have not had much time to investigate the ins and outs of this fully, so any input is welcome. Is it feasible? Of course it would be a long term project, not something one could expect to finish in a few months, we all work and the kids have school and life as kids as well.

Gentlmen any thoughts are welcome

John

By Tom- Date 04-14-2008 20:52 Edited 04-14-2008 20:59

John,
Thank you for your understanding. It is not the money nor the time that makes this interesting to me, rather my own curiosity, desiring to know the hows and whys (creativity I guess), and it seems that this is a good place to start. Time consuming and costly, I am sure. Will it be as good as a newly engineered, mass produced contraption that I could probably get for a fraction of the cost? Probably not. But the learning experience of how things work, taking something raw and creating a machine that can create another machine, well that sounds like a journey that might be priceless. I also have young children and hope that if I do take on a project like this that it will be a great bonding and learning experience for my entire family. Heirloom? I think that they would make great heirlooms.

I am really hoping for more comment on this subject, has anyone done anything remotely like this?

By DaveBoyer (*****)

Date 04-15-2008 04:02

Tom, My suggestion to You as a tool & die maker/machine builder is to buy some old machinery that needs to be rebuilt and rebuild it. Scrape the ways flat etc. This way You will learn what You need to know and end up with machinery You can really use, not some piece of cobbled together cra* that is a poor excuse for a machine tool. Metakworking tools are not made from aluminum castings You pour at home.

I am not trying to talk You out of a home foundry, just suggesting that You cast things that are appropriate with one.

By jrw159

Date 04-15-2008 06:02

BTW Dave, well said, and very good advice from one of the many different aspects of our industry. It is not negative thinking or resistance, but realistics of the modernized and advanced age that we live in. I have many times been accused of thinking negativly, when actually I was being nothing but realistic.

John

By Tom- Date 04-15-2008 06:14

Dave,
I appreciate your input, it really just seemed like a very interesting project to me. I think I will at least buy the books and take a look.
I am not a professional metalworker of any sort, though I do have some training and love for welding which was lost for some time. In my young adulthood I joined the Army as a welder (metalworker). I hated the Service, probably because I am too much of a freespirit, by association I hated welding as well; twenty years later I have found a return of the zeal that I once held for metalworking.

I just want to understand as much about it as possible, in every facet possible: metallurgy, engineering, designing, fabricating, you name it. Will I ever be able to bring it all to fruition? It is pretty ambitious... and I am no fool, but I sure want to give it one heck of a whale (I don't think I spelt that right).

I really enjoyed welding alot as a kid, and the drive is coming back. Soon I will be forty, but I am not dead yet.

Thanks for the advice.

By DaveBoyer (*****)

Date 04-16-2008 04:18

Tom, metalworking machine tools need to be rigid and pretty heavy to work at all well and with any real acuracy, particularly lathes and milling machines. Less precise and more simple overall equipment lends itself better to home/amature building. If You choose Your projects accordingly You should be able to have fun and learn a lot building things that will actually work pretty well.

The website practicalmachinist.com is a great site, You might ask these questions over there and find people with more experience with these plans.

By Tom- Date 04-16-2008 22:28

Dave,

Thank you for your advice. If I were to decide to buy a lathe, what brand would you suggest?

By DaveBoyer (*****)

Date 04-17-2008 02:38

Tom, If You are shopping for a used lathe, condition is far more important than brand, and I suggest that You get one with as much tooling as possible as all the bits and pieces get costly and take a while to track down used. I think a used machine makes sense if You have the time to find a good one and preferably a well equipped one. You will have the best luck finding a well equipped machine buying from a home shop. At auction or from a machinery dealer the tooling is often sold seperatly.

In a new machine on a budget, I would look at companies like Enco or MSC and see what they offer in complete [machine and tooling] packages. I would probably NOT buy a lathe from a farm store or a Harbor Freight type outfit. I don't know about Grizly, I never dealt with them.

With regard to size, a 12"-14" swing machine is pretty versitile, I would definatly not go below 9" swing. Quick change feed and thread gearing is worth having, in todays world metric threads as well as inch would be nice. The spindle speeds will be changed by belt or gears, either one is OK on a home shop machine.

By jrw159

Date 04-17-2008 03:05

Dave,
Thanks for the valuable info for a newbie machinest. I have a small amount of experiance with machining tools ranging from lathes to old iron workers, shears and brakes. In my limited experiance I have realized the importance of the "accessories" so to speak. This would definatly be something to consider when setting up something for yourself for the cost reasons you have stated. This is something that is often overlooked in the initail purchaseing of some items.

John

By jrw159

Date 04-15-2008 05:41

Okay,
here is my thought at this time. I feel that Dave is right in the aspect that this will not work well for production in general, considering the understandable fact that most of anything produced from this process is going to be not only costly in monitary values as well as time consuming. figure in to this, the resulting product could very well be a cobbled together piece of crap, depending on many different circumstances.

I think that I can honestly see both sides of the coin on this one.

It would really depend on what one is looking for as an end result.

If one was looking to make a reasonable living from these tools, one better be "Top-O-D-Line" so to speak, and have an overload of time, drive and hustle to make this work.

If one is looking for the educational, historic, fundamental, and satisfaction of the experience, it could be worth it.

I have to say in reality, in the world we live in now, this is a learning project and not a money making project.

John

By devo

Date 04-15-2008 13:16

I have built the sheet metal brake. It was one of my first fabrication projects and as such it doesn't work so well, but that is entirely due to my skills and not the plans in the book. The prints and sketches in the book are clear and easy to understand. If you can cut a straight line and accurately locate and drill holes, then this project is well within your abilities. The brake as presented in the book is 18" wide and will handle about 22 ga. for full width bends. I also have the Gingery book on designing and building centrifugal fans. These would be good for a home shop exhaust hood or some other small scale application. But the construction and testing methods described are simple and effective, well within the reach of the garage shop. If you haven't checked out www.lindaybks.com then you need to. I have a book on aircraft welding from 1942 that is amazing. I just ordered another first printed in 1905 that describes how to make producer gas (gasoline) from hardwood. There are countless other books on casting, machining, electronics, and others.

By jrw159

Date 04-15-2008 14:48

Thats a great website, thanks.

jrw

By Tom- Date 04-15-2008 16:33 Edited 04-15-2008 17:04

John,
That is a great website and thankyou. I really hope that you, Dave, or anyone that might be reading this forum do not get the wrong impression. Communication itself is a complicated task, especially without the visual (non-verbal communication).

I sincerely appreciate all the time, effort and invaluable information that all have contributed.

Wait a minute woah! that is an awesome site. I just had not gone to the homesite. What a wealth of information, a life time of study perhaps.
This could be dangerous. How did you find that?

By Tom- Date 04-15-2008 16:53

Devo,

You must whip it...sorry, I couldn't resist.
The fuel from hardwood is an interesting topic. I wonder if this is anything like the current attempts at bio-fuel, using micro-organism's biproduct to produce fuel, don't know much about it, but it is very interesting.

The exhaust hood would be nice. Currently, I only have a mig machine and I believe that I read about the exhaust hoods taking too much of the protective gases away from the welding area causing contaminated welds. I am just now building my shop and am not sure how to address this problem.

Nice to hear from someone who has used a Gingery plan.

It would be nice to see this forum develop into a brainstorming session on how to develop different metalworking skills in general.

By aevald

Date 04-15-2008 18:31

Hello Tom-, part of the intent of the "tricks of the trade" heading on the forum was intended to promote just such items. So if you or any others would like to share topics, techniques, or otherwise, I would say post them up! Best regards, Allan