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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blitzfike" data-source="post: 1738911" data-attributes="member: 807"><p>I drilled a slightly undersize hole and them reamed it with a Half inch reamer. I then polished the resulting hole with some diamond lapping compound. I started with a longer piece of stock so I could hold it in the lathe chuck without having to change it's position during the machining process. My chuck is 40 plus years old and has some wear on it, so repeatability is not as good as it once was. I then machined the taper on the end of the collet and moved it to the mill to cut the slots. I didn't have a thin enough keyway cutter to cut the slots so I resorted to the hack saw method. That leaves some ugly edges which I removed with a small triangular file. I then moved it back to the lathe to cut it to length, bore the top end for the screw and threaded it. Inside threading I usually do with a hand tapper with a live center holding it in line with the part being held in the chuck. Lots of tap magic and a little time and you have a good clean threaded hole in line with the axis of the tool. After all that, I chucked it in the lathe and polished it again to be safe. I ended up about 10 thousandths oversize for the bullets which works well in this tool. I cut the tapers for both the collet and the holder with the cross slide adjusted fot the angel I wanted, so that everything matched without having to guess at it. (I used to same procedure to cut tapers for prop hubs for one of my homebuilt aircraft.) The body of the tool was made from a piece of hydraulic ram left from another project. Good tuff stuff with chrome plating on the part except for where I threaded it and the top end where the screw goes through for the collet. I also made the screw portion from a piece of grade 8 bolt, large enough to turn down and leave a head large enough to put another piece of rod through for a handle. This was pretty labor intensive, but turned out pretty well. At the time, I couldn't find one made to fit the Lee 50BMG press, so I made what I needed. Blitzfike</p></blockquote><p></p>

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