Wife's Christmas gift

[ScrapMetal]

(12-22-2013, 09:55 AM)PixMan Wrote: That's pretty cool. She's going to love it, but I'm betting you'll have as much attachment to it as she does. ;)

It's aluminum. Can you do the "clean-up" with a die grinder and carbide burr?

I'm not too sure about being "attached" to it. After all the stress of trying to get it drawn up, the kinks worked out, fixturing it properly, actually milling it, and the hand-work that I'm about to undertake with it (all above my "skill level" mind you ), I'll probably never want to see it again.

Here's where I'm at on it:









As you can see it's still a bit rough. After the wife goes to sleep tonight I'll head down to the basement and have a little "dremel" session with it. I still need to square off the slots on the inside of the cross. I had initially planned to do the horizontal ones with an end mill, turn it on it's side and use a square end mill. I gave up on that as at that depth and size I couldn't think of a good way to fixture it properly without a whole lot of work. I can hold it all by the base but the piece itself it fairly "springy". Seems a file/dremel/etc. would just be quicker.

One are that I still have concerns with is the "tail":



I am hoping to use some small drills to clear out the material near the base so I can get files and a hacksaw blade in there to cut a sharper angle.

Still have to figure out what to do with the base and how to finish/polish it up.

Overall, so far anyway (there's still time ), I haven't made too many glaring mistakes. Considering this has all been done on a manual mill without a DRO I've only turned the handle the wrong way twice. Once wa a major "ouch" but fortunately I just swapped the sides the cut outs were done from and the boo-boo went away. The other one I wasn't so lucky and took off a bit too much off one side of the inner tail area. I'm hoping to be able to cover it, or at least make it less noticeable (to me anyway), when I do the final finish.

Thanks,

-Ron