[TheForge] Buffalo Forge Post Drill

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

I got my Buffalo drill press with a buggered quill end.
I confess to clamping a 2 way adjustable vise to the table with a lathe 
bit in the jaws and incrementally faking a jacobs taper by trial and 
error on the buggered end.
Hardly precision, but it worked well enough for most applications.
Fortunately, i didn't know better.
We've been fogged all spring, with the odd few hours of sun in the 
afternoons. The basil's doing OK, the tomatoes are retarded but mostly 
still alive, the apricot's done for the year. Managed to feed some of 
the wild kittens a bit of canned cat food ( kitten tamer in a can) until 
the big cats found out and elbowed the wee ones out of the way.
Heck with the tom cats..they're supposed to be hunting!..fed the rest to 
the dog..he was very appreciative.

Mike Spencer wrote:
>> 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
>