From pillar to post

Hmm. I made a half decent job of the base plate, starting from a handy piece of bright steel flat I found in the collection of stock I've acquired over the years. All went well apart from a senior moment when I mounted the plate in the milling machine to drill the hole pattern for the various fixings. 

Years of self abuse have taken their toll on me, so I am now old and fat and stupid. I managed to clamp the plate on the piss in the Chinese "South Bend" vise, failing to notice it wasn't properly located in the stepped jaws. Rough calculations suggest it ended up around 3 degrees off the horizontal while I drilled the 5mm pilot holes. And even though I corrected the issue before drilling out to M8 clearance, it didn't have quite the fit-up I was expecting. I suspect it may have been fine but I was sufficiently pissed off at my stupidity that I started all over again, this time with a piece of 1/2" x 4" black flat. This time it went better and I had it finished in about 50 mins.

Being black steel, there is a skin of oxide on the surface. I ripped it off with the band sander on the top surface but the bottom one is pretty flat without having to remove it all. Ideally I'd have some patio cleaner (sulphuric acid?) to pickle it with but in fact I don't.

The pillar simply required 4 x M8 holes tapping in the base. I've got some rather nice YG spiral flute machine taps including M8 size, so this was an ideal job for it. I started them off in the milling machine then used the cordless drill to tap them out to full depth.

And Bob's your auntie. 

 The M16 x 80mm bolts arrived from Bolt World yesterday, just in time for final assembly:

I may even get round to tapping the additional holes in the cross slide if it seems that would improve the rigidity. Sounds as if I should do some parting off tests with the old Korloy "Saw Man" parting tool....