Excellent video Jon! As much as I love all tap magic products when I use the Aluminum tapping fluid I have that cinnamon smell with me the rest fo the day! LOL Great stuff!!!!!!
I am doing 4 holes this morning through a 2.5 in thick block of forged steel. The best part is the tap needed is a 1inx8 tpi I made a tap guide out of 1.5 in thick steel. I'm not worried about the tap breaking as much as I am concerned about if I have the strength to even turn the dang thing ...lol
Great video Jon. As a machinist i have had my share of broken taps. I think you could make a whole video on removing broken taps. I worked in a factory for 26 years and we had all kinds of extractors and also an electric tap burner. Right On Jon ! ✌🇺🇸
For tight spots or where the material can't be bought to vise or drill press - use a nut partially threaded on the tap, it will act as mini tapping block. Some wobble, but can be better than freehand. (Not my original idea, but have confirmed it works.)
Momy Kat no where in sight, never even thought about whether the tap was vertical / str, guess I'm a hack trying to get more skills to achieve better results and less accidents...tanks for sharing, hope all them critters that call your place, "HOME" are safe
When I was in the steel business pretty much anything from a number 10 to 3/8 we chucked the spiral tap up an electric hand drill. Probably not the recommended method for most but if you have a good feel for tools it works quite well in a lot of scenarios. Disclaimers: Don't Try This At Home....You'll Likely End Up With A Stack Of Broken Taps.
You develop a "feel" for tapping with an electric drill. I always used a variable speed drill for this, and the newer, better battery operated drills are better than the older corded drills were. We used to need to tap hundreds of holes in the cold rolled (hard!) steel sub-panels for electrical enclosures, and doing this with a hand tap would be ridiculously tedious. Anyhow, after you break a few taps off, you develop a good feel for when to reverse the drill, and how much torque you can apply. I haven't broken a tap off in a long time now. But this is a skill that you have to practice to get the right touch! Buy a handful of taps to have on hand when you start off doing this. Use lube, feel the torque, and wear eye protection.
Right On! 🙌 I do like the WD40 as it doesn’t have that weird tap magic smell 👃😵💫 That’s cool you have the Rohm Chuck. I’ve been trying to find out more info on their chucks.
