Steel Guitar Builder

Hi Dave, I'm afraid not, a mill spindle that uses a drawbar and a drill press spindle are completely different animals. The closest thing would be a benchtop drill/mill type machine....they're cheap new and even cheaper used....that said, they tend to be atrocious pieces of sh_t...a big step up from...

not a big deal Bent, but my name is Ross, not Russ. By the way, you're kickin' butt with that mill, your changer and the other parts you're making look really nicely done! I just took a quick google tour of some radial drill presses and all that I saw had the check attached on a self locking taper. ...

c'mon guys, don't be trying to do mill type cutting in a drill press...someone will get hurt...its not if, its when! If you've been doing this stop now, you've been lucky! sorry Bent, I just had to jump in....drill press chucks are usually held on by a self locking taper and are meant to cut with do...

I've spent lots of time behind the wheel of tig welders and standard oxy-acetylene torches (brazing and gas welding) on very thin wall tubing and mig welders on bigger stuff...this looks like a neat swiss army knife kinda tool to have around the shop, but it definitely wouldn't replace my other rigs...

that looks wonderful Bent...great job! My only input on "to chrome or not to chrome" is that it will take a little messing with tolerance wise...the application of chrome is not typically all that precise. The average plating shop is usually more adept at, chroming bumpers and harley parts and not p...

Reaming or boring is pretty much a necessity if one wants to insure a precise hole size. Assuming sharp edges and reasonably appropriate feeds and speeds are used, reamers will net a fine surface for the use being talked about here. Boring can offer a good surface too though not nearly as easily or ...

I'm a fairly mechanically savvy guy and did indeed already understand Burt's diagram, but animations like these are awesome...it'd be really cool see this type of animation of some of the interesting changer designs I've been perusing in old patents...trying to figure out what's going on from the pa...

Happy Birthday Mac!

the hardest part was getting the weld blob in there without the adjacent "fins" (about .040", 1mm thick) turning into a molten mess....that would've added a lot of extra work to the job! As you can see in the pic, one of the pointy tips on an adjacent ear burned back a bit.. I laid in the weld, mach...