Junk Yard Find

[Hawkeye]

My work day ended a bit early today, with me not far from my favourite scrap yard. I managed to find a nice piece of 5/8" thick cast aluminum for a project I'm contemplating. Once more around Steel Mountain and I spotted this on the ground.
   

I waited for the yard owner to notice me and stop his machine, then asked what he figured it would be worth. He says, "For you ... Is it Christmas? ... $20, plus tax."

When I stopped in at my buddy's machine shop to show him, he offered me $100 for it.

There are apparently a few parts missing, but I don't know what just yet. The diamond point is there. For reference, the radius dresser is 15" long.

Now I just need a couple of things to make it really useful. A surface grinder and a bigger shop.

[PixMan]

Great find! I have a Phase II one like it that I picked up off Craigslist for $20 as well, though mine came in it's original wooden case with all the accessories.

Of course a gloat doesn't count without a photo, so I'll get one soon.

[Hawkeye]

I learned a lot about this tool this morning. The Yuasa manual gave me a few hints, but leaves out a lot of detail. No cams on this one, but there should be two large buttons to help register the starting position. I'll work out the dimensions and make those soon.

I did replace the locking bolt that shows on the side of the body in the top photo. The aluminum knob works very well and is a lot closer to the original one.
   

[Hawkeye]

Today, I made the missing register pins for zeroing the measuring pin when setting up the height of the diamond point. Some careful measuring lead to a wild 'educated' guess as to what diameter they should be. I ended up using 1/2" O1 drill rod. It all seemed to work out accurately. all this for a tool I won't have a use for until a surface grinder falls into my lap.

   

For those who haven't had any contact with one of these (like me until this weekend), the horizontal pin traps the sliding body between the two register pins while you set the diamond point to the centre line of the tool. After that, you can loosen the lock setscrew (the centre one above the body that holds the diamond point). Then, if you slide the measuring pin to the right until it clears the left-hand register, you can slide the dovetail down and place gauge blocks between the right-hand register and the measuring pin to lock the point a measured distance from centre to dress a grinding wheel to a convex profile.

By sliding the pin to the left and moving the body up, you can set the point to shape the grinder to a concave profile.