Old Research Ball Mill Repair with my buddy Matt 

As someone who just recently lost my older brother, DO NOT EVER apologize for spending time with your family.

I've been missing you these days without our regular Saturday visits my friend so I just meander around these older posts that are always a bunch of fun. Thanks again and I hope things slow down enough to see you on Saturday mornings Steve and coffee time. When Plasma torches came to be I wonder how much the accetylene manufactoys hurt from their sales going down, down, down. I just use it with my rosebud now. I have a new us postal story for you. I pour pure silver in my little forge where I use shot/grain for my casting materials. It (50) ounces left Montana and promptly dissapeared. After a long hunt and track they found it in Oslo- Norway. At least it is still in system but Vanderhoof BC Canada is a little bit different than Oslo. It is the first time I have had any troubles from your Postal Service.

Not sure how I missed this one. Rapid Tap is my go to lube/coolant in my world. Far less chatter and better cooling as well.I was wondering if all is well so thanks. I sure know busy my friend.

So satisfying to watch that ring un-screw!

My favorite machinist because you are genuine, the real deal...

Morning Steve. Always look forward to seeing a video from you. Over the last several years you have become part of my Saturday morning routine. May God bless your family and yall stay safe.

Hi Steve, Ian from UK. If you've got family, you've got no reason to apologise. That is what most of us have, and know what you're going thru'. Say no more.Loved the video esp the easing of that joint. I hoped you would have used the Kroil on the first sleeve but happy you did on the second. That stuff is a marvel. It isn't sold in many outlets here so costs an arm and a leg. I wouldn't be without it though. If the bat comes back, just open the door, it will find it's way out soon enough. Look forward to next weeks video, thanks.

Very nice shop. Your machinery is much the same as what I started out with in the old factory I began my machine repair career. Now in my retirement I have a shop that if nothing else go and sit just to remember. Thanks for bringing back some of the repair work.

I could tell u work together just by watching u both work.

I so look forward to viewing your Saturday morning videos. They are the highlight of my weekends. Thank you for your content.

Glad to see a new post Steve. My Saturday morning always seems incomplete without You and Cora. I see the surface grinder got moved.

Hi Steve from the UK. It's great to see you upload a vid this .Saturday morning! I've missed my Saturday morning watching your video for the last couple of weeks. Yes we all know life gets in the way, especially with a new baby in the household, and Gramps and Glamorous Granny are very busy at times lol You and your buddy made a good job of getting that mill apart, especially getting the second bushing off. Boy that Kroil works really well! I'm surprised you didn't use it to soak the threaded flanges prior to removing them, but your method worked very well anyway. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the alteration and reassembly, if of course you are going to video it for us. Cheers from the UK ,Sam

I have used the ATP multi tools and they are great, Pro tip, in a Bridgeport type mill lock the quill and crank up the knee, lots more control and much easier!!!

Woo hooo! Saturday morning cartoons are on! Thanks Steve!

Great video Steve, we have missed you, but family comes first. I hope everyone is well and life is treating all of you right. Can't wait for the next one!

Cuddos to you Steve for using the fork lift to provide the work at a reasonable height. No kneeling on the ground, bent over work pieces! Work smarter, not harder

At 55:12 when you said "To the Saw BatMan", that was obviously a call for the bat to appear.

Glad to see you're back! I missed my Saturday morning updates! God bless you and Elizabeth! Life's only constant is change!

Congratulations on the new addition to the family .

Family comes first! Good to see that your friend stayed to help you after you did him a favor. The whole video was great, but the look after the wedges fell off the drill press was my favorite moment. What is going to fall next you were thinking I'm pretty sure. Will be here to watch when ever you post I hope.

That's a good idea. Let your friend do it. The video even shows the fumes coming off.

Enjoyed,

Good old heater cores. They always hide them behind as much stuff as they can too.

I have four grandchildren myself, they all different but they all love their Pop Pop. Thanks for sharing.

Soon good to see you, Steve. Nice solution to this project. Very entertaining as always. Your back up alarm works great!

Glad to see you back, Steve. Really cool content this week, your work stuff is always interesting.

Thanks Steve

Your truck turned out, so freaking nice..really a gem and many of us can relate to your style of build.. wouldn't have changed a thing my guy..your vision for it was spot on .

Good to see you, Steve. Love all of your content

Spring! We all need spring to come! Good work and good wishes, Phil, Uk

Funny how you can spot the torsion arms from a bug - even if all mine are king and link pin. Great job guys

Glad you're back.

Glad to see you back in the shop I understand that life changes and enjoy the strange things you work on

Great video, sure was glad to see you back

Thanks for the video. It’s nice to see you.

Glad to have you back thanks for the video

Good morning. A very interesting project today. Thanks so much. Have a great week ahead.

Glad to see you don't have in flow problems! 😊

So your jest "to the Bat Saw!" actually turned out to be clever foreshadowing! Thanks, Steve.

I'm a big fan of Smith torches also.

Thanks Steve, as always...enjoyed. -Tom

Another good video Steve, thanks for posting!

It's good to see you, when I see 👀 you.

Happy Saturday Steve, Cora, and Grits! Good to see ya, we miss ya out here but I also have Grandaughters. Thanks for sharing , spade bits are new to me.

if your saw is the only thing too low for your support stand..put some riser blocks or casters on the saw and get it at a better height for working..i have 2 small bandsaws like that and they were too low for comfortable use anyways...plus i put them on casters as moving or getting them out to use or away from what i am working on.. is alot easier than dragging them or leaving them out in the way !! 🇨🇦🤓🤙

Back in the stone age, ball mills were the premier tool to grind pigment to make paint. The mill would be charged with pigment powder and suitable liquid and set to run, usually overnight. Steel balls could be used for blacks, but would discolor lighter colors, so flint pebbles or Coors mullite balls were used. In a production setting a separate ball mill was used for each color due to the difficulty of cleaning a mill and the balls well enough to not contaminate the next color. By the time I left the paint business forty years ago, ball mills were being replaced by smaller lighter faster machines.

Great to see you back on the channel.

Nice one Steve this made me miss my best friend even more (just distance)

That’s a pretty cool project. Good to see you back, hope all is well.

Steve - you probably know this but put a c-clamp on the round stock when using the vertical band saw - makes it act as a lever and stops the rotation.

Matt’s awesome.

Hey! There he is! Happy Saturday morning!

Well, I have done quite a bit of machining and truck and tractor repair. I just watched your video this snowy Saturday morning in Northern Ky. and I have absolutely no idea what you are doing. Very interesting however. When sawing round stock on a vertical band saw weld a piece of angle iron to the end to keep it from rolling. Just takes a second. Ellis

Thank you for sharing.👍

That proud face when you remembered the word after a brain fart 😂

Love to see you!

Hi Steve! It’s good to see you! Hope everything is well and Hi to Elizabeth!

Size isn't everything Steve - as long as it does what it should! 😁

Great video Steve! Coffee and breakfast with my buddy!

Steve, you should put a C-clamp or a Kant-twist clamp on a round part that you're cutting in the saw so it can't roll/spin on you.

bats are great, theyll eat up all them skeeters. Building a bat box is easy and encourages bats to eat up all the lil flyin bugs around you. Great video as always, thanks!

Greetings, usually from Dorset, UK but from India for the next few months. 👋

Last time I did a large hole (65mm) in 5/8 steel I used a technique I saw on RU-vid. I spotted the hole to mark the outline and drilled a 1/4 in relief hole at the cut line then cut out the hole with a hole saw. I did buy a quality hole saw to start with. Despite my initial concerns it worked perfectly. The cuttings went down to relief hole and didn’t jam the teeth. It only took a minute or two. I did learn it needs to be done dry. Any liquid lubricant I tried to use just gummed up the relief hole and defeated the purpose. The drill press was just an old 17 in Delta.

Great Video Steve

So glad to see you in the bat cave again. You've been missed. Nice work on the tumbler n adding a drain plug. Take care, quit cutting your thumb and we will see next time.

We used to make custom ball screws for customers and we found an inordinate amount of times the packages would arrive empty. We finally decided that the packages are X rayed and our ball screws looked like gun parts and someone was opening them and when they found it was not something they could sell, they just tossed the box and contents into the damaged pile, where the package would still forward onwards, but the ball screw went into some "unknown thing" pile. We started writing on the package with a sharpie in big letters " Special bolts".

Great video

Steve, if I wish to pay an arm and a leg, I will ship other than USPS. It takes longer, but no damage, so far. From Georgia to Northern Manitoba, and Washington State to Northern Manitoba. Slow yes, but I'm not paying United Pilfer and Steal's prices. YMMWV, but happy so far after 40 years of ordering parts/material out of the US.

I have done the same work on a 68 VW before, I used a large C clamp....

If you still have that plug. I would suggest welding an inch and one quarter steel block on the face (something to get a wrench on) to facilitate turning it and breaking any corrosion to pull it out. Maybe a loop also for removal. this could be done without the whole end plate in hand.

You still haven't installed flow restrictors in the Cat lift to slow the downward movement? Edited to add: Even a ball valve that you can control the flow would be better than nothing.

Chatter requires increased feed rate and possibly a less sharp clearance angle on the cutting edges.

Smart giving the wife a potent truck! Then she can pick up "this and that" when she's around.... Joking!'

I love the black bandage. No apologies or trying to hide your injuries with a namby-pamby pink bandaid. You gotta OWN your injuries. 😂 I’m glad I’m not the only one who does that kind of thing. Once I was cutting a piece of polyurethane foam on the bandsaw, pushed it through with my thumb, and ended up with a slot in my thumb that looked an awful lot like it could have been made by a bandsaw blade. Go figure.

Yay!, the pointy gladiator lugnut covers have fallen off of Johnny Cash!!!

A heater core is a pain to replace but not the worst job...i worked on many Chev/GMC trucks of that vintage.... a lot more room than some vehicles to do that job....

Steve, you have to remember, cut towards your chum, not towards your thumb. Best wishes from the far North.

Oh great, just about to go to bed and this shows up! Lol.

If that plug leaks perhaps cut an o-ring groove in the shaft of the plug an use an oring to seal it.

That had nothing to do with the box you sipped those sockets in Steve, but everything to do with the USPS outright stealing your stuff. I hope it was insured and also that you filed a complaint with the USPS IG. That is totally unacceptable - it certainly was not an accident.

Hello Steve a spark came out from a black box when you start the bronze pickup 1:46 pay attention.

I can't look at your new old truck and not hear Lee Majors singing "unknown stuntman" ;-)

You said "batman" earilier in the show, I think you summoned Bat-man.

No one is more exploited than a grandparent and we'd hate it if it were otherwise.

Steve: Why not use a threaded galvanized pipe union of the size you want and weld it over a drilled/milled hole? Hi to Cora from Thailand, too!🐕

Why did you not machine a little projection on the end of the plug so that it would stick through the hole in the flange and then you could have put a fillet weld around it? Plug welds do have a tendency to crack out and they are hard to repair. A fillet resists cracking much better and should it crack it can be repaired much easier. And yes dammit, I am a journeyman welder. I've tried spade bits in the past an the only thing I found where they worked well in a radian arm drill press on automatic feed. Hand feeding tends to chatter because the human arm cannot keep a constant pressure on them.

Steve, I have sliced my thumb using a knife like yours, 5 stitches and a few hours in A&E, I have now learnt a steel rule is not to be used as a cutting edge.🤕

Thanks, 10 minutes left in the video & I had to get up and pee; which means on a snowy day I had to stop in the kitchen, on the way back, & make a snack.

I have a 2” rotabroach you could have borrowed would have saved a lot of time. Of course then you could not have made as many chips. 😎

11:13 a dual tip would've been great there. A little heat from both sides.

Use a plastic bag with the parts inside then add expansion foam under the bag and on top till the box is full . Just like a brick . Tape shut .

I want to see that mash mill in operation.

The ball mill I was familiar with used 2 oil pumps. The high pressure pump suspended the mill on a cushion of oil; the low pressure pump lubricated the top of the trunion bearings.

I've heard many horror stories from inside of USPS and I'm not even living in the US :) Again and again it gets confirmed, the diversity is your biggest strength.

Well what a nice Saturday, another video of yours and both you and Josh Topper having problems drilling holes. Do you not worry about Cora getting arceye when you are welding?

Would a slight taper on the plug and the hole it goes in have been good to make sure it would always be easy to release?

Morning Steve 😅

Maybe an annular drill bit would work on those bigger holes?

Red bud winter!!!

It's been a lotta years, so memory may be faulty, but I seem to remember the VW factory manual stated a *minimum* of 16 or 20 tons press force for the ball joints on a Typ 2 Bus. (Bug is probably less, since they are smaller) If they go in easier than that, the arms need to be replaced.