Has Anyone Here Ever Bought A Saw From Kenny?

[Mastermind]

I can't recall how this all started, honestly. I was trying to buy some wood off of him since he's always out there milling nice hardwood slabs and I do woodturning. I'd been living next to him for quite a few years before he found out I had a shop.
I know every saw he uses (quite a few!!) has been worked over and tuned in one way or another and that most stuff he does doesn't require machine work, but a lot of it is over my head. I'd done some bar work (milling and hydraulic press) and repair stuff for him, and the base/band stuff started as an experiment in a way but he was liking the results. I know he had sent stuff out to people in the past but wasn't thrilled with the results. He's a pretty clever guy and I think seeing the capabilities next door got his gears turning.

Kenny is lucky to have a talented machinist next door. Good on you for being a friend to him.

 

[USMC615]

 

[davidwyby]

It would be super cool in many ways if the crap could be put aside, and @AshlandMachinist stuck around…I do know a little of machine work and like what I see.

 

[Nutball]

Looks like the best machine work I've seen on here to be honest

 

[Woodslasher]

Looks like the best machine work I've seen on here to be honest

Yeah, as a guy who has seen (but never used) a bunch of nice machining stuff, my first thought was, "Damn that's a fine looking setup."

 

[lehman live edge slab]

Looks like the best machine work I've seen on here to be honest

Not to detract from Ashlandmachinists abilities in any way but this statement might be a little over the top. There’s some pretty all around talented people here on this forum and they include some very good welders and people that can machine well.

 

[davidwyby]

He’s just sayin what he’s seen. He and I haven’t been around as long as some. Doesn’t need to be a competition. I know my shop can turn out nice stuff and so can @srcarr52.

 

[Mastermind]

He’s just sayin what he’s seen. He and I haven’t been around as long as some. Doesn’t need to be a competition. I know my shop can turn out nice stuff and so can @srcarr52.

I'm not a machinist. I have a lathe exactly like the one @AshlandMachinist shows in his pictures......but I don't consider myself a skilled operator. I have a job that I do.....and I do it well enough to feed my family.

 

[davidwyby]

having kenny for a neighbor must be pretty intense.

Like camping? …in tents.

 

[cus_deluxe]

Like camping? …in tents.

what you did there....i saw it. lol

 

[Mastermind]

what you did there....i saw it. lol

I did too. And....I laughed.

 

[AshlandMachinist]

I'm not a machinist. I have a lathe exactly like the one @AshlandMachinist shows in his pictures......but I don't consider myself a skilled operator. I have a job that I do.....and I do it well enough to feed my family.

Those 9x20s are pretty handy for what they are. All my equipment is modified for the kind of work that I do (mostly opto-mechanical and electromechanical prototyping work, though I do a lot of relatively low-precision replacement parts for things like musical instruments and woodworking tools.) The top-slide/compound on the Jet is almost unusable from the factory in my experience, though if you're not cutting tapers you can just clamp down on the gib screws and take it out of the equation. There's not enough mass in the carriage to do a respectable facing cut without locking it, but it fits neatly in a garage and runs on single phase so I can't complain too much. I worked over all of the mating surfaces by either grinding or scraping as needed, replaced the gib screws, and added a DRO. The tailstock required a hell of a lot of work on mine, too. There's a good user group for the things on some of the machinist forums, but it's never going to be a Hardinge HLV-H or anything - though, fortunately I've got one of those in my shop at work. Despite that, I paid for most everything in my shop with work done years ago on a little 7x14, one that I modified with an electronic lead screw stop so I could thread full speed up to a shoulder and stop on a dime.

I'm mostly self taught, but I've had some good mentors that set me on the right path at various times in my life. There's no shame in using a tool to just get a job done, so to speak. I'm that way with welding - while I'd be embarrassed to show my work to an actual welder, I can stick things together and it's gotten myself and others out of many a bind. Not everything needs to be beautiful or pass x-ray...

I don't mean to be disparaging of other people's work, I just do what I do or what I'm told to do. Kenny had to remind me on more than a few occasions that they're just chainsaws, not laser parts, and if I'm chasing tenths then I'm just playing with myself.

 

[Fruecrue]

Tenths of an inch?
Tenths in the cut (chainsaw racing term)?
Or ten-thousandths?

Not a serious question.

On a serious note, we may come off as a blood thirsty mob, but we’re a close knit group, and we defend that like its family.
I’ve hung out with Kenny a few times through the years, he’s different but the same in person if that makes sense.
I harbor no ill will toward him.
For some time I was his official translator on this site, the one who makes sense of his half sentence riddle speak when (often) needed.
All that said, Kenny wrote his own book, including his final chapter here.

Cool to see some machine work with a slight- outside of the norm- twist. Well done.

 

[Nutball]

Not to detract from Ashlandmachinists abilities in any way but this statement might be a little over the top. There’s some pretty all around talented people here on this forum and they include some very good welders and people that can machine well.

Very true: Red97, I liked his method for cutting the squish on a 2511, and his custom cylinder mods on the 590 platform, Doc's recreating cylinder fins out of weld only, srcarr52 crank case fixes, those who precision grind the sides of racing chains. Many capable guys here with nice tools, but I was impressed with this appearance of this guy's execution on the cylinder work. It just came across as extra precise and very well thought out, but it's just another way of getting the same basic result.

 

[Woodpecker]

@AshlandMachinist I’d like to point out that those things Kenny had you do were not his ideas. Just sayin

looks like you are a fairly skilled machinist I hope you stick around.

 

[lehman live edge slab]

I have a 12x36 craftsman lathe not real heavy duty with the flat ways but at least it’s the newer version of it and they’re heavier material. I’ve forgotten a fair amount I learned at machinist school over 20 years ago but have an uncle and cousin that live within a mile that can help me with anything I need. I was one of those people that couldn’t decide what I wanted to do so I was kind of a van wilder of tech school. Took a year of hydraulics and pneumatics, a year of machining” all manual stuff no Cnc”, a year of millwright and 2 years of welding. But actually it’s been pretty handy to know kinda whats going on in many different areas. Machinist school we started making all our own high speed stuff then we silver soldiered our own carbides, after that we went to inserts. Also learned how to sharpen drill bits teacher gave us 1/4” bits ground flat and we had to sharpen them to drill a hole within a set tolerance.

 

[Kiwioilboiler]

@AshlandMachinist people don't use the term savant on here very often, perhaps never.
Might just explain a lot. If you're talking to Kenny over the fence mention that the Kiwi picked up on it.

 

[AshlandMachinist]

I have a 12x36 craftsman lathe not real heavy duty with the flat ways but at least it’s the newer version of it and they’re heavier material. I’ve forgotten a fair amount I learned at machinist school over 20 years ago but have an uncle and cousin that live within a mile that can help me with anything I need. I was one of those people that couldn’t decide what I wanted to do so I was kind of a van wilder of tech school. Took a year of hydraulics and pneumatics, a year of machining” all manual stuff no Cnc”, a year of millwright and 2 years of welding. But actually it’s been pretty handy to know kinda whats going on in many different areas. Machinist school we started making all our own high speed stuff then we silver soldiered our own carbides, after that we went to inserts. Also learned how to sharpen drill bits teacher gave us 1/4” bits ground flat and we had to sharpen them to drill a hole within a set tolerance.

Those are great little lathes! That extra mass would be nice, for sure.

Not surprising you couldn't figure out what you wanted to do in tech school, I still can't decide what I want to do haha!
I did take a few metalworking classes in high school, studied physics in college and trained in the Mech E shops, then learned a bit from an old timer prototyping machinist at a national lab out in Colorado, and was always hanging around asking questions with the guys in the prototyping shop in grad school while I was fumbling my way through making apparatus for research. I built out the machine shop at my work, but was smart enough to suggest that they hire an apprenticed tool and die maker to run it and subsequently I spend a lot of time picking his brain when I need to do something outside of my own experience. I wish I had more exposure to millwright methods, or at least rigging - it comes up all too often at work and I've had to figure out a lot of things the slow way .

Despite the small size of that 9x20 and swinging a large off-balanced jug (this is a 60mm), I think I can manage a decent surface finish. It took a lot of experimentation with tool geometry and speeds to get there, though. I'm no metallurgist, but there must be a high silica content in these cast aluminum alloys as they are incredibly abrasive. I was about to try PCD inserts (expensive...) before settling on hand-sharpened brazed carbide. Don't need a chip breaker for cast so it's easy to get a nice, sturdy edge on a solid chunk of carbide and I'm not spending as much on inserts. I do use them on the boring bar, though.

 

[Moparmyway]

Jug was surface ground with a diamond resin wheel for parallelism between base and top of fins for accurate cutting.
View attachment 309111

Why would you use the cast fins as a reference when you have the bore right there ??

 

[redline4]

The dude took something that didn't belong to him.
8 years of pretending he didn't and now it's a mad scramble of "I've been looking for you"?
B.s.
If that saw even exists he can stuff it up his thieving azz.