Drilling V-block

[its_34]

I got to do some unplanned welding today (the good kind). Needed to drill holes into some tie rod studs for cotter pins so I fabbed up a quick v-block to use on the drill press. A short piece of angle iron and some 1/4" flat bar came out of the scrap barrel. I cut the flat bar into two short pieces and tigged them to the back outer sides of the angle.




The legs are pretty short and I did not have a good way to hold them square so heat distortion did its thing. The welds are also 10x longer than necessary for this, but I couldn't pass up a good practice opportunity. I flipped it over and squared the feet up with a quick mill pass.


This is the bottom side after taking about 0.100" off. It sits dead-flat on the table now.



I can't believe I didn't do this long ago. 30min and $0 later, there's a new tool in the drawer. Works great but I think I'll come up with hold-down clamp and add that later.

[geezer]

Nice little project,,,I have done similar to that,,,,using 3 short lengths of angle iron,,,2 facing down to form an "M" ,,the third one facing up and cradled by the other 2,,,the V piece has two holes drilled in it for a plug weld to hold it all together,,,simple and quick,,,,problem is ,,,when using it,, it slides on the drill press table and makes it hard to keep position,,,,,my answer to that was to buy one of those X,Y vises mounted on the drill press table,,,,and use a store bought V block or adding a strap across the homemade block and adding a tongue to it to clamp in the X,Y vise...Home made Jig's and other tools always give a guy a sense of pride..