I’ve just made the prop washer, nothing exciting, I used a piece of inch diameter bar, centre drilled and then a 4.8mm hole to clear the 3/16 shaft. Parted off at 2.1mm thick, faced off the reverse to tidy up and job done. Hang on a minute, how do you face off a 2mm disc in the lathe?
You need one of these! Basically a backstop that sits inside the chuck jaws. This was made so I could machine the eccentric straps for my Stuart Victoria.
It’s important to face off the back stop before each use to ensure its absolutely square. The workpiece can be held in place with the tailstock whilst the chuck jaws are tightened. I think I could get to just less then a 1.5mm thick washer using this approach but it would be nip and tuck at that.
If I need to go thinner, then I take a piece of bar stock and face it off. I loctite the part(s) to the barstock leaving them overnight with pressure applied to keep them flat to the barstock. Following day, barstock in the lathe, face off to required thickness. Warm up with torch, loctite melts and there you go!
I really need to get some Stuart kits (a water pump and a V10) built, which I can probably do in half the time it took to do that crankshaft!
But the Whittle crankcase is really tempting for the next round.
Building a Whittle V8 