Making Stuff Again

So today I had a friend call me up asking if I could make a part for his Cricket. I had no idea what a Cricket was... turns out it is a little machine to cut paper and such for scrap books.

 He wanted to be able to use it like a plotter to draw on paper. It has these felt tip pens you can get... but he wanted to use a fine tipped pen. Anyway... he came over with the machine, some pen holders, and a piece of aluminum rod stock. I grabbed a piece of graph paper and a pen and started taking measurements and drawing stuff. Before long we had a plan and headed to the lathe.  It feels great to have a lathe again... I REALLY MISSED being able to design and build stuff.

So anyway... off we went to the garage and started making metal pieces fly. (With appropriate safety equipment of course!)

Making the body of the pen holder.

Cutting the notch where the cricket grabs the holder.

Finishing the bottom with a nice 10 degree surface and rounded edges.

The original knife blade (top).

The Pen  (center). Should face the other way.

The finished pen holder (bottom).

The notch on the pen holder is actually perpendicular... 

but it looks angled in the image because of reflections.

From start to finish it was about 3 hours I guess... but we took our time, I explained what different tools did, and probably made it more fancy than I needed too. But it was great to use my hands and tools again. Sorry, no video of this project... I was too busy to operate the camera and turn metal at the same time. Perhaps next time! (I need to make a camera mount on the lathe... there's a project for me.)

Jerry