Chris Williams' Journal

Today I made some shims. I had a piece of bright tube steel that I had from somewhere that I had put aside for another project that I started 20 yrs ago but never finished. 1" outside dia. - 5/8" inside. Close to the dimensions I needed to part off some shims.
In a 3 jaw chuck with about 75mm sticking out I bored it out to 3/4" for about 40mm. The outside had rusted a bit so it didn't run true, but close enough.
Faced off the end and set up a parting tool up against the faced end.
Measured the thickness of the tool bit 2.38mm - 3/32".
Needed to make a shim about 1.3mm to be close to 50 thou. Didn't need to be super accurate. I can get the accuracy I need with the addition of the thinner shims.
That meant that I needed to move the compound slide 3.7mm to get that thickness. Slowed the lathe right down and using some Sol.Oil cutting fluid slowly parted off the shim. I expected a fair bit of burring, but to my pleasant surprise it parted off nice and clean. Added another 3.7mm and pretty soon I was cleaning up and wiping down two identical shimms 1.4mm thick. About 55 thou. Too easy.
I should be able to put the hubs on now with no problems.