A Job For A Bro... Part 1

A good friend of mine is into scuba diving and he tasked me to devise a way to fasten a stainless steel rod of 8mm diameter, around 400mm length, to a snap bolt.  The rod, according to him, will be used to tap the oxygen tank of diving buddies for signalling and to brush away sea urchins if they refused to move away.

The stainless steel rod was provided.  I was told that it was a spear in its glorious days.  Cutting off the threaded tip used for mounting the spear head and the other end for hooking on to the bow (I'm guessing here...) should leave me with enough length to make 3 pieces.

Not many pics were taken as I've yet to complete the job due to some problems...

Cutting the snap bolt.  This fella has tough skin but cut easy once the blade passed through the outer shell.

The rod was then cut using the Proxxon Mitre Saw.  I'm getting to love this machine.  Bought it from Mike of sgTooling.com a while back.

Turned down one end to 5mm for M5 threads.

The snap bolt was tapped M5.  Left some space for the spring to allow the bolt some room to move.  Don't know will the joint be too weak.  Planned for Loctite permanent thread lock.  I'm not into welding.

This was where the problem started. I was making a die holder to accept the set of metric die I bought. They measured 1" in diameter.  The last one I did was too big.

After drilling to 10mm, I started boring on the lathe.  The workpiece was pulled out of the 3-jaw chuck twice in a row.  First time encountering this.  Maybe I should reduce my depth of cut to less than 0.25mm per pass.

I ended the session tonight due to the effect of medication.  Time to wrap up and hit the bed.