I'm not a machinist, nor did I stay at a holiday inn express.
I took every machining course in highschool, and completed a year of an apprenticeship. Afterwards, I never pursued it.

I've amassed a few of the cheap chinese tools over the years, and put them to use when bored this weekend.
$10 bucks of materials, and around 6 hours of time.

4340 short bought for cheap


a little bit off the top here


get the little 9x20 chugging with some drilling and boring


What the hell is it for?
it coincidentally fits on one of these

and one of these

drilling the old fashioned way- no DRO or CNC (or what 2 hours of headscratching and work looks like)

a little bit more sawing

It seems to fit in one of these.


I made another widget to fit previous doodad, no pictures cause I was in a hurry. Here's what it looks like so far.


tune in next time, for "how I'll spend countless hours making $50 of picatinny rails."

That's pretty cool.

I'd like to make something for fun.

How did you index for the holes on the barrel nut?

measured the distance between holes on an existing barrel nut, plugged it into an online bolt hole calculator, used a DTI to center the spindle, and went to town moving x and y for each hole.

I think a DRO is on the list of things to get before a rotab. Moving the table using dials is a pita, and I never fully trust it with the 5 or so thou of slop.

And so we come to my next project I just did.




What is it?
edit- besides a messy desk

Nice job  What are the threads in the YHM rails? And an AR receiver?

iirc the thread for the rail was around 1.840" and it was 30tpi (Had a hell of a time finding proper gearing for my baby lathe)

The receiver itself is 1 1/4"-18tpi