The first picture is of the pattern. The foundry was good to me and used it as it was, but it should have been made in two pieces.
The second picture is of the rough casting as recieved from the foundry. Very nicely made, I have not had any problems with hard spots during the machining.
The next two pictures are of the setup I used to rough machine the casting. I used a two insert carbide endmill held in an Erickson collet holder, using my Rockwell horizontal mill. You can also see that the casting is longer than the travel of the table. I machined the first section, then slid the casting along the table, aligned it with a dial indicator and machined the remaining section.
This picture shows the straight edge completely rough machined. The next step is to get the casting stress relieved.
This is the test block I used to check the angles on the straight edge with the surface plate. This block was carefully machined, set up on a sine bar and gage blocks with the milling machine. The block has 4 different angles; 40, 45, 50, 60 degrees. With these angles most any dovetail slide can be checked.
This view shows how the test block is used with the surface plate. In actual use, the angle on the block is coated with Prussian Blue and rubbed on the straight edge to show the high spot.
This picture is of the scraper I made for this project. It uses replaceable HSS or carbide blades. Personally I use carbide blades made by Sandvik, they stay sharp for a fairly long time, and are easily sharpened with a diamond wheel. For a complex job like this one, HSS blades would be a sharpening headache.
Stay Tuned. I'll post more pictures as I progress.
