Poor Man’s Screw Head Polisher…Part 1 of 2

[tmac1956]

Part 1 of 2…

All:
Since I can’t afford to buy a proper screw head polishing tool, I finally put together my own “poor man’s” screw head polishing system using tools that I already have. The polishing wheels consist of three hard steel wheels (8mm collet blanks), one brass wheel, one copper wheel, and two hard rock maple wheels. The diameters vary due to my using the materials I had available. Collet blanks fit like any other collet. The brass and copper wheels were drilled and fitted with a 3/16” diameter shaft using Loctite©. The wooden wheels use this shaft as well, but I used glue to hold those in place.

To eliminate cross polish contamination, each wheel is dedicated to a diamond polishing paste grade as follows:

Here are the polishing wheels:

Lathe setup:
As you can see, I’m using a pin vise to hold the screw. The pin vise is secured via a boring bar tool holder that came with my QuickChange© tool holder. Eventually, I want to build a different holder arrangement that I can dual purpose for snailing, but this works for now. Initially, I tried to hand crank the head stock pulley using a back-and-forth movement as is done with proper manual screw head polishers but that took too long, so I adjusted my pulley configurations to lower the rpm to 138 and used a very light touch under power.

Close up:

To polish the sides of the screw head, I just crank out the cross slide and polish similarly, but I have to loosen and contra-rotate the pin vise against the wheel. After that, the screw is removed and the slot polished with a piece of fine brass wire. (I would prefer iron wire, but I don’t have any fine enough on hand). I use seven pieces of wire– one for each polish.

In between grit changes, I dip the screw into naphtha and then alcohol to remove the previous polish. It is my understanding that you should avoid contaminating the wheels with multiple grits. The screw slot is cleaned out with a toothpick.

Continued…

[tmac1956]

Part 2 of 2…

Note! Obviously, you don’t want to get this polish into the lathe head stock bushings/bearings.

Screw before polishing:

Screw after polishing – before bluing:

Screw – polished and blued:

Later,
Tom

[chris mabbott]

Excellent McGyverism brother Tom and great info regarding polishing.

I was actually playing at making a couple of polishing disks for those pesky convex head screws, I was going to
Use a round tipped boring bar to cut a channel in the plate that would accept the radius of the head.. A thought not yet a reality

[tmac1956]

Chris:

Steffen Pahlow has a video on that, but it’s all about doing it by hand using steel burnishers and suede files. Your idea sounds fruitful. These screws are so small that one or two special tools should do the job. Keep us informed.

Later,
Tom

[namonllor1953]

Excellent job, Tom. Thanks for sharing this info.

[gerene]

Interesting topic and a nice solution Tom.

Jan

[willofiam]

Hey Tom, looking good even though your just screwing around 🙄 , for the convex head do you think just rotating your tool holder would work? William

[tmac1956]

William:

Steffen Phalow has a pretty good video on that issue. However, Chris mentioned creating some sort of cup tool into which one could place the polish and the screw head.

Thanks!
Tom

[stevefitzwater]

interesting find on eBay for those looking for screw polishing options

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bergeon-Dial-Tool-Plus-Boley-Screw-Polish-Lathe-Watchmaker-Lathe-Tools-/301485725444?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4631f31704

[tmac1956]

@willofiam wrote:

Hey Tom, looking good even though your just screwing around 🙄 , for the convex head do you think just rotating your tool holder would work? William

By holding the screw in a pin vice, one could probably use a series of felt/cotton buffing wheels with ever decreasing grits of polishing compounds to get the convex head screw to a mirror finish. I got the idea from David Pierce and it makes sense.

Later,
Tom

[chris mabbott]

Now that my friend, is a true art form in meditation, concentration and infinite patience. When you’re performing that task, nothing else enters the cranium, you’re simply focused on that pesky little dot that retains the jewel setting 😯
I’m still amazed how they thread those little turds..

[tmac1956]

@Chris Mabbott wrote:

Now that my friend, is a true art form in meditation, concentration and infinite patience. When you’re performing that task, nothing else enters the cranium, you’re simply focused on that pesky little dot that retains the jewel setting 😯
I’m still amazed how they thread those little turds..

One can polish a turd to a fine sheen but in the end, underneath the polish – a turd is still just a turd.

[tukat44]

Chris Mabbott wrote:
Now that my friend, is a true art form in meditation, concentration and infinite patience. When you’re performing that task, nothing else enters the cranium, you’re simply focused on that pesky little dot that retains the jewel setting

Tmac1956 wrote
One can polish a turd to a fine sheen but in the end, underneath the polish – a turd is still just a turd.

Two Observations referencing the these two quotes:

1.) That pesky little dot is NOTHING compared to the Waltham Jewel end stone that, as I was trying to place back into the jewel setting before closing up the setting on a waltham balance setting took leave of the tweezers that I was carefully using to put it back into place and flew across the room- after sweeping the room on my hands and knees for two and a half (British) hours, after I gathered the 1/4 teaspoonful of dust into my dustpan, I found a clean piece of paper in a well lighted draft free table and went through the dust speck by speck. an hour and a half into this exercise, it did in fact reveal itself, but I could easily have passed it by and dumped the whole batch into the bin whereupon it would have been lost forever. The fact that it suggested “Red” was its only saving grace, because I would not have given it a second look if it had not whispered “red” to me.
2.) I am to believe that there is a place in this world for a turd. Where that ideal place is, I do not know, but when I discover it, my hope is that they will be all well tended, and if they are polished, all the better. At least they will have been taken care of for those that hold them in esteem- Me- I like SHINY THINGS LIKE SHINY SHINY TOOLS, SHINY WATCH MOVEMENTS THAT GO AND GO AND GO (I think my eyes glaze over and I go into a kind of trance any time something shiny catches my eye- That and women) (and cats)

Nice post gentlemen- as always, My Regards-
Tukat

[tmac1956]

@tukat44 wrote:

snip…

2.) I am to believe that there is a place in this world for a turd. Where that ideal place is, I do not know…
snip…

Tukat

I can tell you where that place is… it’s at Microsoft’s management and planning complex – you know… where all of the idiotic butt kissers reside. Just follow the administrators with the brown noses.

Later,
Tom

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