Tubal Cain - Metalworking for Home Machinists

Tubal Cain

Copyright 2021 by Tubal Cain and Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc., Mount Joy, PA.

Copyright Special Interest Model Books Ltd 2005

First published by Argus Books Ltd. 1983

Second edition published by Nexus Special Interests Ltd. 1998

Third published by Special Interest Model Books Ltd. 2005 First published in North America in 2021 by Fox Chapel Publishing, 903 Square Street, Mount Joy, PA 17552.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright holder.

Print ISBN: 978-1-4971-0172-2
eISBN: 978-1-63741-043-1

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Reprinting this title to bring it into the highly successful Workshop Practice Series has given me the opportunity both to introduce a number of new devices and to revise some of the original matter but one important change metric equivalents to imperial dimensions has not been made nor have Morse number drill sizes been corrected to millimeters. To have done this without cluttering up the drawings would have required that almost all of them be retraced. I have, therefore, assumed that readers are quite capable of making the conversions themselves where necessary.

I should, perhaps, explain the use of the word simple in the title and the philosophy that lies behind it. I have the greatest respect for those who design and build sophisticated workshop equipment and do, in fact, take advantage of their work it would be a poor workshop which had no tool-and-cutter grinder! But my interest lies in the designing and making of models of engines, real or imagined, or things for them to drive.

So, if any manufacturing device is needed I always carry out a study of its cost effectiveness (cost in my case being mainly the time involved to make it) and unless any such device will either save a lot more time or will facilitate accurate working preferably both I will tend to disdain it. I try to look for solutions to problems which are both simple in conception and speedy in construction. Most of the ideas shown in this book can be made in a few hours (sometimes even minutes) and few require bought-in material.

In the introduction to the first edition I mentioned (at the suggestion of friends!) a sort of pecking order for the various devices, the implication being that these should be made first, but this does present many difficulties. My most used device a little piece of wood or a length of string to hold bits together is not shown! However, the following may help.