Now I gotta figure out how to Change the gears on my lathe to thread an 18 pitch thread.
I have never done this before, so it takes me about an hour'ish to figure it out.
Long story short, the only mistake I made was to not "space the gears" properly so she was making a funny humming noise.
I saw a Tubalcain video where he said to use a piece of paper as a spacer tool, so I tried it.
It worked perfectly. No more "abnormal humming" (It's about the most useful thing you can use a IRS form for, besides wiping your a$$ ...LOL)
Here we go........
I have a ton of these, what I would call, "pre-ground threading bits" from when I bought the lathe, so against Dans advise (and I should know better by now) I decide to use them, instead of buying a special threading tool.
I take great care to use my "fish tale" and line it up as perfectly as I can.
The pressure is mounting and I am at Def Con 3 right now......
I have a ton of work into this (at least it is for me....I know a real machinist would have this done in minutes, but I am rolling up on the 5 hour mark)
So I "chicken out" and decide to put a "scrape piece" in the chuck to make my test pass.
I fire her up and flip the "half nut" when the dial hits "2"
That's as close to perfect as I can do, so I think it's a "Go", so I chuck the real piece up and I do notice a "little run out". (like Dan pointed out earlier, You should try to avoid doing that.)
Its not too bad though, so F it.
I mark it with a black marker and take a "scratch cut, and once again.....Perfection.....
I take a few pass's and test it with my "test nut",..............everything is looking good and I'm "stoked".
Fu@K yes.....I finally did it.