Thread: Novice using Douglas Shaper

Hi Ben,
Here's what I have so far,
The upright attached to the base and the tray is made from 2 pieces of 25mm square solid bar (and here is where it gets confusing) 22 5/8" long. Apologies for the mixed measurements.
The bracket attached to the base and welded to these up rights is a piece of 30 x 30 x 6 angle iron 5" long.
The top bracket welded to these uprights is a piece of 50 x 3 flat, 5" long bent in half to the required angle to suit your tray.
The 2 uprights are spaced 11/16" apart to provide clearance for the 5/8" bolts
The plate with the holes is 6mm plate (5mm would probably do, 8mm would be fantastic and 10mm would probably best be left for the rich people or a thief. I needed my 10mm piece for another job)
This plate is 15"high and 8" wide. The centre of the first 5/8" hole begins 3/4" from the bottom of the plate and the rest are drilled at 2" centres.
The piece of angle that is screwed to the top of this plate is 12" long and is made from 40 x 40 x 6 angle. I screwed this angle iron on in case it had to be re-worked
The bolts are high tensile 5/8" x 2" long UNF. I chose UNF as they require less heaving on the spanner to get much more tightness.
The washers are made from some shaft I had laying around. They could be less in diameter if you want.
If you need any more info just let me know.

Phil

Phil,

Thank you very much. That's more than enough to get me started. Hopefully I should have it built by the end of the month.

Been a bit quiet on the shaper due to family commitments, but I have a 10" grinder coming this week. So I should be doing some experimenting soon.

Cheers Ben

Hi,

Played around on the shaper (and lathe) some tonight.

Turned some horrible black bar into 3 parts of a square. I'll hopefully do the fourth side tomorrow night and post a photo or two.

Its nothing precision or really that interesting, but I have fun.

Cheers Ben.

ps - do you guys use any form of coolant when using your shapers?

Hi Ben,
I sometimes brush on some soluable oil but I doubt it makes much difference. I dont often do enough that tool wear is an issue.

Stuart

Hi,

This is a picture of last night's effort.

Will do the final side tonight, even everything up and throw it in the four jaw chuck and bore out the hole some more for practice.

On a side note, my 10" bench grinder turned up today - purchased off ebay - some dead s***t dropped it between here and there, now she's totally worthless. One wheel is cracked and one side of the base has broken off. Rang seller, sending pictures and hopefully a new one asap. We'll see.

Cheers Ben

Hi Phil,

I've gathered most of the material for the worktable support and nearly ready to start putting it together.

I been looking at the photo's you've previously posted and can't find one that show's the back of the support you made. Any chance you could post one giving that aspect?

Also, the two pieces of angle bar welded to the plate, are they there for a reason or looks (they do look good)? And, do the two washers lock the plate to the two solid uprights?

There's no rush on the photo's, I'll be lucky to finish it by next week. I let one of the blokes at work oxy-cut 10mm plate, made a mess of it so I'll have to clean up the plate some (a water cutter turned up today, which should be operational by Thur so may use that). That reminds me, I may cut slots instead of drilling holes for more vertical range.

Anyway
Cheers Ben

Hi Ben,
How did you get on with the grinder?

Stuart

Originally Posted by bwal74

Hi,

This is a picture of last night's effort.

Will do the final side tonight, even everything up and throw it in the four jaw chuck and bore out the hole some more for practice.

Cheers Ben

Hi Ben,
Your pics are as bad as BobL's, you have to lie on your side to look at them! Careful, we wouldn't want Arabtool falling asleep....

I just noticed your using HSS as parallels, thats a neat little trick. Probably cheaper than buying good parallels here in Aus too......

Ewan

Hi,

I spoke to the ebay seller again on Fri morning re the grinder, he was going to send a new one today. Should arrive Wed or thereafter, I'll be in Singleton at that time so won't be able to check it. Hope it will be better.

Yeah, I don't have any real parallels at the moment but have plenty of HSS bits, they seem to work ok for practicing.

The photo's come straight off my mobile. Hoping to do something interesting soon.

Cheers Ben.

I'll rotate the photo's on the phone before I download next time.

I bought a set of 1/8 parallels off the ebay seller ozmestore several years back for around $65 posted. They are not perfect, but more than good enough for us home shop guys.

Last year I saw them on his site starting around $50 bidding, so if they are still as good I would recommend them. Just keep them on your watch list and wait for them to go cheap.

I also made up a thicker 10mm set thick many tears ago and still have them.
Bright bar from your metal shop is another good one for parallels, at least when you hit them with a cutter it only damages them and not the cutter.

And last, if you make up a set of vise jaws from bright bar (or even just flat bar for that matter) you can machine in your own ledge which will then be a parallel that is dead true to your axis. If you move the vise of course they will be out, but you can either tram it off the cut jaw, or recut it once set up.

Dave

Just make sure to check the tool steel with a mic to ensure they are the same size,at times there can be a few thou variation.
No real need to use them only for practice they are suitable for proffesional work.

Originally Posted by bwal74

Hi Phil,

I've gathered most of the material for the worktable support and nearly ready to start putting it together.

I been looking at the photo's you've previously posted and can't find one that show's the back of the support you made. Any chance you could post one giving that aspect?

Also, the two pieces of angle bar welded to the plate, are they there for a reason or looks (they do look good)? And, do the two washers lock the plate to the two solid uprights?

There's no rush on the photo's, I'll be lucky to finish it by next week. I let one of the blokes at work oxy-cut 10mm plate, made a mess of it so I'll have to clean up the plate some (a water cutter turned up today, which should be operational by Thur so may use that). That reminds me, I may cut slots instead of drilling holes for more vertical range.

Anyway
Cheers Ben

Hi Ben,
there isn't anything on the back of the plate just the angle bolted to it with those screws. The work table slides on the angle.The vertical pieces of angle are just for added rigidity as I was using up what was lying around my shed. Thicker plate may have worked. I think slots instead of holes would have been better but without the facilities for slots of any accuracy I had to drill holes. You are spot on with the washers. Store bought ones weren't strong enough for my liking
This is a bad pic but you can sort of see the back of the plate.

Phil

Hi All,

I've been busy with work and family the last week or so, haven't been able to do much in the garage.

The work on the work table support is progressing well. I've scrounged the required material and done most o the prelim work. Hopefully tack weld it up and bring it home to check it will fit and then back to work to finish weld.

I've picked up some old shaper books which have given me some idea's for projects. Ie, clamping tools and toolholders ect.

I have just about finished fitting the new grinder to my bench (which is rapidly running out of surface area). The ebay seller replaced the broken one without question within 2 working days.

Hopefully soon I will have something more interesting and technical to post about.

Cheers Ben

Hi,

I'm back! Been a bit busy with life etc etc but have done some fiddling around in the garage.

I finished the work table support, thanks Phil for your help.

I've posted some photo's of various stages of fabrication and the completed item. I haven't tested it yet, but hope to do some shaping this week.

Some of the photo's show some of the welding I done, the photo captioned bodegy welding was a vertical up using mig, I grinded it off and re done them horizontally. I welding the angle bar to the 10mm plate, then ground off the bead and gave it a quick lick on the linisher.

I had to mill the 10mm plate because I let one of my mate's cut the plate out with a oxy cutter, he ran it a bit cold and ended up with a poor finish.

The hardest part, which I didn't take any photo's, was drilling and tapping the base of the shaper. I totally stuffed up the hole spacing and alignment. Which made it really difficult for me to fit the pre-drilled angle plate.

Anyway it all goes togather and hopefully works. I may paint it metallic blue at a later date.

Cheers Ben