Thread: flattening a plane without reference

Originally Posted by IanW

Kokodin, you're a man after my own heart - you don't let insurmountable difficulties stop you having a go, do you?! But I cringe at taking a router to cast iron. I think you should put the "don't try this at home" waiver on that post. The leverage & side-thrust on the bit at the lower setting must have been pretty scary, even with the minutest of cuts.

But necessity is the mother of invention - I admire your persistence and courage..

Cheers,

Well I actuallt watched Tom Lipton from Ox Tools on youtube using wood cutting rounding bit on his printing press project in a really unsafe manner. So I decided to try it myself.
The thing is I only had really big bit with top bearing , but surprise surprise, it didn't even got dull. Tungsten Carbide are amazing.
And if I remember corectly Handyman casting might actually be ductile iron. It is a bit harder than normal grey iron used for most of my other cast iron things.

I belive that this milling operation could be done in a drill press if you had x y table for it

Originally Posted by kokodin

......I belive that this milling operation could be done in a drill press if you had x y table for it....

Yes, done a little bit of that using a cheap aluminium cross-slide table - the results weren't super-accurate, but sufficient for what I needed. It's not recommended to use a drill press for milling, their quill bearings aren't up to coping with too much lateral force, but it's another means to an end. I've considered buying a small milling machine a few times, but it's a big outlay for something I'd use once a year at most, & the rest of the time it would be just taking up precious space in my shed!

Cheers,