Tailstock - Part Two

I got the tailstock welded up this past week. It came out looking pretty sexy with the silver hammertone paint. It's got about an inch of vertical travel and maybe 10 degrees of swing, both left and right. To be honest I never even measured the amount of swing, I just figured it might come in handy sometime. I still have to cut a groove in the rod that runs through the middle and make a screw with a big washer on it that will fit in the groove on the rod. That will allow me to snug the rod up tight in the end of a shaft I'm going to machine. I'm going to try and get that done while I'm on Christmas vacation. I've been knockin' 'em dead when it comes to finishing things lately. I'm going to try and keep that streak going.

I picked up the flex rod and "O" rings for the steam engine. That project is also a priority for the vacation. They still haven't got the painting done in my shop at school so I'm not going to try and tackle anything big in there yet. A school board member came in to see me about it, though. He's a new board member and is trying to make some positive changes. Let's all hope that's the way it turns out. We've got lots of room for improvement.