Shaper Work 1st Horizontal cuts on the K&T Mill 

I enjoyed watching you and your machine tools. I always got a kick out of using a large face mill on the horizontal mill, to square up large blocks. Brings back alot of memories! Been retired for 4 years now, and believe me, I do miss the contact with mills, lathes, and shaper.

Always appreciate the creek shots and countryside filming

It’s nice to see the fruits of all your hard work with the mill. Thank you for sharing it

Another great Saturday Morning machine shop video. A great way to start the day. Now I just need to get off the couch and get to work in my own home machine shop.

That K&T sounds and cuts great, what a find with all your hard work. Can't wait to see more.

Good to see the family team work :-)

Having breakfast watching Steve's videos is fast becoming my Saturday morning tradition. As always great stuff Sir. I truly appreciate the time and effort you put into creating this content. Thank you!

I always look forward to your videos Steve. Keep up the good work!

That shaper is looking beautiful, you have done a great job on it.

Great video as always Steve. Nice to see the mill working like it’s new.

Really enjoyed the footage of the creek! It's beautiful.

Thanks Steve! It is always exciting to start up and use a machine for the first time! My first horizontal cut on my Ajax, was milling some gears. Scary and satisfying, when it comes together.

Great video this week, I look forward to watching your videos on Saturday's while on my lunch break. So cool that you have found a way to repurpose railroad tie plates. Keep it coming with the K&T mill videos.

Nice to see it working in the horizontal position. That second cutter works like a charm. Nice work.

Steve, I scored on a bunch of cutters awhile back at an estate sale. There was an old, heavy steel, shop made tool box kind of kicked to the side. The tool box was very well made so I was interested. I asked the attendant the price but it was a bit more than I was willing to pay. At the time I was more interested in the box than what it contained as there was a lot of just plain junk in the top tray. I spied the owner of the company conducting the sale and asked him his rock bottom price which he placed at 15 bucks so I bought it. When I got it home I sorted though the contents. The top tray had an array of old taps and various bits of metal. When I took the tray out I discovered the bottom was literally full of 1/2, 3/8 & 5/16 lathe cutters. A few were already ground but still plenty of steel left though had a light coat of rust. Under those however, were over fifty brand new Stelite and Crobalt cutter blanks of different sizes. I was amazed. Of coarse the Stelite and Crobalt don’t rust so they gleamed as new. I know the original owner was a machinist for a well known heavy equipment mfg. which was the reason I was at the sale. Since the expensive cutters were very well hidden in the box it makes me wonder a bit about path they took to arrive in that old tool box. That type of cutter is not usually found in the home shop in my experience. I have ground a couple of them for use on my lathe but let me tell you it takes forever to grind them to shape. I’ve never encountered such hard cutters. I haven’t found them to be brittle either. Also I am even dozen track plates I picked up last summer. I don’t have a shaper so I’ve been smoothing them out with a fly cutter which takes awhile but works ok. I figure if those plates will withstand the stresses of train engines and box cars they must be pretty decent metal. Dale

Gotta have my Steve Summers Saturday Morning Machining Session aka SMMS , especially when the new K&T is making chips! Thanks Steve, great work.

Great video!

hi . pick up a K&T model-K vertical. thanks for letting us see you get through yours.an good thing for 2 year old videos . thanks again

What a smooth machine! Nice video Steve!

Always like your shaper work. Your mill is a keeper for sure and your machines are like mine ,, old, but they’ll outlast most of what’s made today. Excellent viewer gifts.... wow....those cutters are serious. Thanks for sharing Steve. 👍👍👍

Cool work 👍

This episode makes me happy. Even the blooper around 17min mark. Nice work Steve:)

Great video Steve. Wow new tooling is a bonus!. Looking forward to more big chipsCheers

Great to see the first chips off the K&T!

Great shaper footage. Like your apprehensive look when making first cut on K&T mill. Keep the vids coming...……….

Good to see a straight arbour on that horizontal mill, with the cutter cutting all the way around. All arbours in our apprentice shop were bent!

Nice to see a shaper running as fast as this showing what they used to do back in the day. Is this laying down a challenge to Adam to see him run his hard? 👍😉😇

beautiful shop, machines and place you got there

Nice video, I enjoy shaper work. They do their suited work very well (like any machine) with little tooling. Also really glad the k&t seems to be going just how it should, its proving to be a really solid machine.

I use the same spray blue all the time love the stuff ;-)

Man I`m happy when a score 1 cutter ,, you must be extatic ,,,, Great vid Steve ,,

I like the water feacher in your back yard

Great work and nice video .

Nice work on the K&T! Think I'll give that layout spray a try.

The sound of that thing is therapeutic

What a way to start the year with Shaper action!

Good job keep up the Great work👍🏼

Cool video Steve keep them coming

mill sounds sweet should be proud for saving it Steve

Man, that second cutter head sounds good. There is something satisfying with sound of metal machined properly...

happy new year 🤩

Thanks for the interesting video Steve

Morning Steve sweet way to start the New Year off I can see you cutting some splines and gears in the future. Great viewers mail and lots of new tooling, a big plus is having a new machine to use that dividing head on. I delivered several loads of tie plates and had the opportunity to see switching tracks made. I still have a few plates around I use when I'm bending pipe or square stock with a torch, the double tie plates have more holes punched in them and if you weld a few together you wouldn't believe how handy they are.

Im not a metalworker, not even close. Im a logger, but man do i like these old machines!

Now that's some but kicking shaper work. The K&T is looking good and starting to earn its keep. Bummer about that first cutter. Some great camera shots including the fresh air walk by the creek. good tip on the RR plates. Keep up the good work Steve and enjoy the weekend.

Steve, another great video! Thank you a small congrats on your mill!!! I have a few no spill cutting oil containers I’d like to send your way. Not sure how to do it. No worries, just wanted to say thanks man! Keep it up. We are all watching and learning a ton!!! 👍👍👍

27:01 - a custom crate built to fit exactly in a flat rate box... genius! If it fits, it ships.

I love that front mounted chip catcher tray Abom rigged up.

Like using recycled materials, the mill is a hoss. I hope your not getting drowned, because we down my way are blessed with lots of rain. The up side it is warmer than usual so that’s a plus. Happy New Year

your the only one working today. thanks

Enjoyed Steve! ATB, Robin

It is always such a nice laid back visit with you Steve. I can sit back. relax and enjoy remembering when I was working as a master fabricator/machinist. Retirement sucks bud. The shaper and now the K&T are both serving you very well bud. Always a nice visit Steve.

Quite a significant tool acquisition. I could hear your shaper saying "here I come" on every stroke.

Hi Steve, I'm sorry for my English, but when we watch your videos with my little son, it starts someone to dance to the shaper bit)))

Happy New Year to you Steve and your lovely wife. I've Ben following the story of the mill. A thing of beauty, good to see the first cuts. Rigidity of set up and of course sharpness of the cutter is all important. Until the mid arbour support is functioning you should try to bring the outer support and cutter as close to the column as you can. The stick out doesn't matter until you dong your head on it.... Haha. Thank you for the effort you put in.

Wife sez when this video is over I have to go fix stuff.....I'm on the 3rd replay now.....

Now that you got the mill fixed you need a VTL and a planer :) Love the videos keep em comin!

tons of fun man

Steve you live in beautiful country !! Mark

BIG hobby Sam as little hobby huh! Great show sir!

Automatic clapper lifter? That's a new one on me. I think you need to show us how that works in one of your next videos. 😊

Éssa máquina é top👍👍👍

Watching you sweep up the chips was very ASMR.

Also your 2" long flute end mill is easy stuff to grind if you have centers in both ends. If you grind it between centers it will run dead true to shank as that's the way the shank was ground. I had a customer that gave two tools like yours with centers. Believe it or not both end mills ran out a 1/32" . He said later he gave me both cutters because he was not sure he could get his job done with one cutter . He did it all with one cutter and felt real good about that .

Struth! The size of that End Mill.

You could add an air cylinder at the side of the machine, which generates a bit pressurized air on the slide while operating. An air nozzle could cool the tool while it's being dragged back plus push the chips out of the way for the next cut. This way you don't cut with a chip stuck between the edge of the surface and your workpiece, which can leads at least to uneven cuts. On the forward stroke you could suck the smoke directly at the tool in with a different hose and clean the air with a simple cyclone filter from debris and vent the air out of the shop :)

If you can keep the arbor support & master bush as close to the cutter as possible , that is the go , Cheers .

I have to get you some video of my Cincinnati 2-24 rise and fall production mill cutting brass. Two 4.5" hinge halves at the same time. Horizontal mills really move loads of material.

Nice job on the plate.

You fixed the coolant pump on the mill, that cut looked like a good candidate for flood cooling, if only to clear the chips.

I love watching the big shaper do its work. Now my next favorite is the KT. Takes me back to 1968-1970 HS Machine Shop where I used both shapers and horizontal mills. 'til next time Keep Machining! PS: I love the creek shots.

Im no machinist just an old mechanic/DIY guy, but to my untrained eye the horizontal arbor looks like its running very true. Nice footage, thanks.

Great vids. Toss the plate with mill scale in a pail of vinegar overnight. Mill scale gone, no machining required. Cheers

Great way to start my day. Thanks for the great video Steve!! I get a lot of joy seeing that mill cutting again. Shes just so smooth. And yeah, tie plates are great steel, tough stuff but machines well. I've always wondered what grade of steel it is. I think it has some molybdenum in it because it machines like some low moly steels based on its toughness. Spikes make great steel as well!!

Hi Steve I’m not sure what this is going to say about me. But my job does not require a lot of concentration I started at 4 PM watching you go get the milling machine I watched everything up to your first horizontal cutting with the mill lots of video I do enjoy your videos I normally don’t watch in eight hour blocks ! i’m really not even sure if I should admit to watching eight hours of Steve Summers video. But I think I’m a better person for it. Just know you’re teaching old man a lot about how to live. As always, our best to your family. Kimber & Diane Zelik

Delicious looking chips, made me hungry.

To stop the clapper from lifting and hitting back down on the work fit a spring (could be a rubber or elastic strip) to hold it gently down as it returns.

16:48 Don't feel too bad Steve.. that happens to me all the time.

Teez nuts!

Some day there will come a man who invent's a shaper-machine that cuts even on the backward stroke, thus almost doubling the work speed.

Steve, would you mind posting that SFM (100 ft/min for mild steel) vs stroke length cheatsheet to come up with strokes/min? Thank you in advance.

Did I hear faint banjo music in the background, or was it all in my mind :)

Have you ever thought of mounting the camera to the shaper ram? It would have to be very ridgid, but it would be nice to see the clapper lifting, and see the chip curl off the cutter. Thanks for the great videos.

Just in case you are not aware of this, you can do gang milling and create more than one cut at a time. So you can create your tee nuts in one pass, two "grooves" at once. You retain the same cutting speed, but double the output :-)

lol, steve, you'll have to ask dan about the chips flying from the shaper, thats the only time Ive heard him screaming and running from a machine while cussing at it, lol. Good to see that you have the mill running horizontal mode. If I come with some extra funds or come over that way sometime, I have one of those 1 1/4" cutters like you were using, a staggered tooth one that I cant use because of only having a 1" arbor. I may also know of someone with a massive 50 taper face mill, but not sure what he would want for it, the thing is probably 6 or 8" across, Ill have to see what he wants for it.

That one shell mill looks like it is on a beaver holder like I use on my HBM. I would be interested in it if you don't need it. I love those lovejoy facemills as well you know. Nice scores!! Did that tie plate come from the Frankfort and Cincinnati railroad? Does your mill have antibacklash so you can climb mill with it? They usually do much smoother climb milling as the plate is backed up solid by the table instead of trying to lift.

when you checked your arbor did you check the spacers for parallelism? i know adam had issues with that, might have to grind them (edit) oh maybe it was just that cutter then and a regrind will fix it :)

Those old machines are second to none. They just don’t build them like that anymore.

That tree by the creek. A hundred years from now, I am picturing some poor descendent of yours wanting to cut that thing down and absolutely destroying a chainsaw because it has a boulder hidden in the trunk.

I am amazed you didn't cut your hand grasping that large endmill by the cutting flutes.

Steve, love the video. I see you use a phase converter for your shaper (maybe other?). Any thoughts on that? Is 3 phase power not avaliable to you from power company? Do you have a converter for each machine?

you need a giant shop vac.. saves soo much time cleaning up..

It is good to see the old girl up and cutting. It is not unusual to find runout on horizontal cutters or even slitting saws. I don’t know why.

@18:07 you pick up a boring head. that looks like the big boring head on the G and L 340T over at Brian Blocks shop. i wonder if that is the boring head for the 340T small shaft..

Nice to see the horizontal K&T mill in action. On another subject -- the shaper chip that just missed your eye -- I have this to say. I have safety glasses that provide a lot more coverage than yours and still got a very small chip in my eye -- on memorial day weekend. Believe me, you don't want to go through the process of "drilling out" the chip. Scary. My eye has not yet recovered entirely. I don't know how it happened but I suspect the chip migrated down from forehead level. Moral: get the best safety glasses you can find.

you have the cutting tool particular to the work so why do you have the clapper-box at a angle?

Tell us about the smaller stream coming under the culvert into the larger stream.

Noel Summers: Worlds most attractive machinist's assistant. If not she is definitely the most attractive with AN UNFINISHED DEN FLOOR!

You should build a chip tray for your shaper kinda like what abom has for his, just hangs on the front of the table and catches the majority of his chips

really enjoy your vids !sound could be louder for us older guys