(03-18-2017, 11:08 PM)Hawkeye Wrote: A while back, someone on another forum posted a thimble as a first project. Not being able to find any thimbles after my house fire, I added it to my project list. Today, I hunted up  a small piece of stainless steel that a friend had given me a couple of years ago. I'm guessing 304 by its characteristics. Non-magnetic, machines quite well. My first time using stainless and first time knurling on a taper. Can't use the clamp knurler for that, so I used a bump triple-header I'd gotten with a lathe or something some time ago. I found that the course set did the best job on the variable diameter.


I used 5 degrees on the compound for the outside taper and again for the boring bar on the inside.
 

It took a while to part it off, but left a pretty good finish. I sanded off the nub in the centre. If I find I need some traction on that surface I'll make up a tapered clamp and use either the shaper to cut a cross-hatch pattern or the lathe to apply concentric circles.


It's a lot heavier than the sheet metal ones I used to have, but will work well for the leather and canvas I sometimes hand sew.