re: Fire Piston

Hi Bruce. At Steelcase we had a Millport that was the spitting image of a Bridgeport. I'll bet it was a Chinese copy. My friend Brian bought it when they replaced it with a CNC mill and it still worked very well! The Chinese mill I have is a Smithy- the people that sold the combo mill / lathe machine in Popular Mechanics. It had metric lead screws and they tried to approximate English thousandths on the hand wheel. I complained to the company out of Washington that it was not accurate and that I did not want to return it but I could make it accurate for $250, They sent me the $250 and  I bought Bridgeport lead screws and hand wheels from a local machine tool company and put them in with a little machining  of the nuts on Brian's mill and it is very accurate now.

Hi Ryan,
I might just look into an LMS metal lathe for our Arizona shop! I have making brass , nylon and aluminum parts for people down there on the Harbor Freight wood lathe with a 3 jaw chuck that I put a 1"-8 thread in the back. It makes parts that work but no where near as accurate as I could be on the metal lathe.