[TheForge] Re: Buffalo Forge Post Drill

[Mike Spencer]

> I recently acquired a Buffalo No.61 Post Drill .
> [snip]
> I would like to remove the original chuck and replace it with a more 
> modern one.

Mine (Green River, not Buffalo) has a sort of chuck apparently
integral with the shaft (quill?) that takes a 1/2" shank and holds it
with a set screw (well, actually, a hefty bolt).  I've asked my
friendly neighborhood machinist to order me a Jacobs chuck with a 1/2"
shank the next time he sends in an order to his far-away supplier of
such things.  I think that will make it quite usable if I can figure
out how to eliminate some wobble in the table.

You got off easy on the brazing.  On mine, the drill advance works
with a fairly thin-wall, hard steel tube with a square thread cut on
the outside.  It was broken in two and had been run that way for
years. I had to get the beat-up ends aligned and oriented right, braze
it and then file out the threads with a warding file.  All good now,
though, and shouldn't break again since the stress on the repair is
compressive in normal operation. (I can't guess how they broke it.)

I also have a W.F. & J. Barnes drill press that Chris & Laurie Huck
sold when they moved to Mexico.  The babbitt in the various shafts is
a bit worn but the spindle itself seems to be in very good shape and
runs true.  I'm awaiting a Jacobs chuck for it, too, one on a Morse
taper shank.

While I'm here, though, I might say that one of the big improvements
in technology for me has been that my local hardware store now carries
Starrett hole saws.  Now I can make holes of 1/2" and over, up to
maybe 2-1/2", without buggering up (any further :-) my cheap and aging
1/2" Taiwanese drill press.  If only they would stock those saws by
16ths (instead of only 8ths) I could make all kinds of bearing- and
fit-this-into-that-type widgets that are otherwise a nuisance.

Summer has finally come to our part of Nova Scotia (after a frost on
the 16th of June!) but now it's been rainy and overcast for going on a
fortnight.  Cabbages and tomatoes love it.  The basil is turning moldy
and dying.


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^