When A Single Image Tells The &^%$ Story

One of the many projects I’ve been juggling this past week was making a new outside cowl for the headstock of the old-as-dirt-but-wonderful Walker-Turner lathe my pal MikeM passed along to me many years ago.  Exactly how and why I was fiddling with it will be told in a series of posts very soon, but for this moment suffice to say that as I was bolting on a new cowl cover this afternoon I had that sinking moment when you feel a bolt wring off.

Impolite words and guttural moans filled the air.

I’m not sure if the bolt broke because I was feeding it in crooked or it bottomed out, but one thing is sure – it’s busted.  1/64″ below the shoulder.

I drilled out the center of the bolt in the hopes of removing it with the reverse thread bolt extractor.  I then spent the next hours in a (thus far) futile search for the set of extractors.   Wherever it is it is hiding skillfully.

But, I did find some other things I forgotten about, so there is that.

I am booked solid for the coming week so it will be ten days before I can return to this particular migraine headache.  If the extraction fails, I will have to drill out the hole and tap it to the next larger bolt size.  Hardly anything more than a First World problem, but it did cast a cloud over Shangri-la today.