well todays firkling in the workshop was productive, i wanted some holders for my indicators, that could be fixed into the toolholder of my lathe, also one of my indicator stands has a tiny dovetail feature for holding the more expensive type of indicator. preparing a threaded hole in the brass square bar was easy enough, drilled at 5mm and tapped m6. next for the dovetails, i have a dovetail cutter, the only problem it only has a 1/2" hole through, so a spare bit of brass hex stock was dug out.
this was turned down to 1/2" for the cutter, then a section at 12mm was turned down and threaded using a die, a 12mm nut was put on the lathe and turned down as a half thickness nut. this holds the cutter in place, the rest was turned down to 9.5mm dia to be held in a collet chuck. this completed it was mounted into the mill,
Then the tiny dovetails were cut down each side of the square bars so they could mount in the indicator support.
Sometimes you just need to make a new tool to be able to make the part you want to make, problem solving, it keeps the brain active and the fingers busy.