Hammerli 208 barrel weight the VERY Expensive Way

Been wanting a bench top mini mill for sometime now.
Seems I’m always D&T something and doing it on my worn out drill press is not the way to go.
Then there is always some project I’m working on that need metal removed
and a file is just not the way to do it.

So I finally broke down and bought one.
OUCH…….and then the starter kit and endmills….. 



So for my first project, I decided to make one of the heavy weights for my 208 instead of coughing up $400 if I could find one





It came out at 506grams

Guess I need to go into the barrel weight business to help pay for this thing…

The price of the machine is nothing compared to the tooling….

I’m only about $200 in endmills so far on this project.
Mill with DRO and starter kit was way north of there 

Next one I’ll clean the sides up before I start.

I intend to have it more black finish to match the pistol better.
Used Brownells blue cream and then tried G96 over that.
I may buy a small sand blaster for the next one also

One thing I was not happy with was trying to put the slot in it with the slitting saw.
Low speed didn’t have the torque to not stall it even feeding it as slow as I could and higher speed vibrated to much.
Ended up cutting it with a portaband.
Next one I’ll do a better job there also.

Sweet! Shootist development versus machinist development.

Look like an easy way to $10K

Step 1: Start with $20K...

bmize1 wrote:I’m only about $200 in endmills so far on this project.
Mill with DRO and starter kit was way north of there 

Next one I’ll clean the sides up before I start.

I intend to have it more black finish to match the pistol better.
Used Brownells blue cream and then tried G96 over that.
I may buy a small sand blaster for the next one also

End mills are disposables.  Add up a dividing head, rotary table, boring head, mill vise(s) [yes you’ll need several], parallels, fixture plate(s), right angle plate(s), 1-2-3 blocks, clamping kits….the list goes on….and so goes the money…

Well with a 5x16ish table and even less actual travel, don’t think I can use a rotary table etc.

It just for accurate D&T jobs and small parts milling.

Probably should have got a bigger machine but my bank account was screaming after this already

I admire what you have done. I don’t think in terms of money, more like did I enjoy doing it, happy with the results etc. can’t put a price tag on that sort of stuff.
Tom

They make rotary tables as small as 4"..it's only money.. get yourself a good set of collets for your endmills and an easy way to tram the head. I started with a center finder to tram mine, but now use a setup with double dial indicators.

bmize1 wrote:One thing I was not happy with was trying to put the slot in it with the slitting saw.
Low speed didn’t have the torque to not stall it even feeding it as slow as I could and higher speed vibrated to much.
Ended up cutting it with a portaband.
Next one I’ll do a better job there also.

Less deep, more frequent passes, perhaps?

For cold bluing, I've always liked 44/40.  I've gotten it to match 1911 slides and frames pretty well.

A friend got a used Bridgeport a few years ago and I had a Hammerli 208 without a front sight, so we carved out a duplicate of the one on my 208s.  When I tried to use it, I discovered the mounting point was at a different height between the two guns, So, we did some math and made another one with a better height.  Pretty big machine for such a small item, but worked quite well.