Shop tools that are ‘oldies but goodies’

I am surprised by the number of engineers and machinists who are not familiar with traditional machining tools and techniques. Many metalworking professionals seem to default to using only sophisticated technology for all aspects of machining without understanding or being able to use more traditional options. This habit includes using coordinate measuring machines to measure parts that can be measured with hand tools, replacing edge finders and indicators with machine tool probes and relying on CAM and conversational programming instead of manually calculating the coordinates of holes in a bolt circle.

Before becoming a manufacturing engineer, I ran a family-owned machine shop. My first machining experiences were on lathes built in the 1940s and knee mills from the 1960s—none of which had digital readouts, power feeds or any of the other now common time-saving accessories. I learned “old school” machining by running manual machines for several years before being introduced to CNC equipment. The skills I learned on those manual machines have been more beneficial than any other training or education I have received, and I exploit every opportunity to practice them.

Courtesy of All images: C. Tate

The author uses this surface gage—one of his favorite tools—to inspect a machined face for flatness.

When I’m at work, I keep my dark-walnut Gerstner toolbox by my desk so my tools are readily available. Why? Because those simple tools are invaluable. Every machinist and manufacturing engineer should have a few common tools at every job. The following are some of them.

Machinery’s Handbook from Industrial Press Inc. is so important that many toolbox manufacturers include a drawer specifically designed to house it. The master toolmaker I learned from told me to buy it before anything else. I have three of the 29 editions and the oldest one has pages marked for quick reference. I can find information faster in this book than I can find it online.

The second tool the master toolmaker told me to buy is a surface gage. I don’t often see surface gages in “young guy” toolboxes, which is unfortunate. In the world of CNC and CMM, many machinists and toolmakers no longer perform proper layout, which is the primary function of a surface gage. However, like test indicators, they have limitless uses. I have used them to prove the flatness of machined surfaces and paired one with an indicator to measure part height on a surface grinder chuck. You can hold the V-groove against a shaft and verify concentricity to a bearing race, and, by resting the pins against the edge of a mill table, you can align long parts or vise jaws without having to crank the mill handles. It is also possible to check the alignment of machine ways with a surface gage and an indicator.

A battery-powered calculator (solar ones don’t always work well under shop light) is also indispensable for machining. I have a $15 scientific calculator to access trigonometry functions. One without those functions works, but you will have to open the Machinery’s Handbook to find, for example, the sine of 29° and 15 minutes.

The same surface gage is also suitable for inspecting the parallelism of two machined faces.