Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Giant Nut and Bolt!

Aren't the jaws in your chuck reversible for oversize stock?

Do not attempt to cut threads by feedinbg your 60° tio orthogonally into the stock. Set the compound feed at 30° and cut with one side of the cutter only.

People don't understand how important math is

Would be cool to see a big nylon lock nut or maybe a washer or lock washer. Definitely cool nonetheless

It's frustrating when it doesn't go right BUT VERY satisfying when it all goes to plan!

Adam, if you want a baptism of fire when screw cutting maybe try a 30mm x 6mm pitch triple start Trapezoidal over 2 metres using 316 Stainless steel! (Which due to lathe limits, had to be done in two halves, 1 metre one way, then turn around and realign the tool and start from opposite end!) That tested my skills to the limit when I was used to doing 'standard' threads like this one!

I had to cut an interal thread of about 2 1/2" af about 16 TPI. The Go side of the thread gauge was damaged at the start, so I turned it around and used the other end that had only miner damage in comparison. I got a really good fit and took the work out of the 3 jar chuck on the lathe.
That afternoon the boss said the parts are wrong they gauge done fit, so I explained. To which he said " you will have to make it bigger they wont understand, they will just send it back." This is British Gas.
I had to put the job back in the lathe with shimming and tapping to get it to run true ( 3 jaw chucks almost never go back to the same place twice after being used for years without being cleaned or oiled in years) then chases the old thread to take another pass.
The work shop gods smiled on me. one cutr that i thought would be to big was just right the bashed end of the go went in and the NO Go didn't. Job out the chuck and on the bosses desk for inspection.
The damage could have made the Go bigger then the NoGo.

You're lucky, when I did this back in the day we had to create our own tools for the lathe, it was not allowed to use highspeed tools (or what ever they are called in english).

The one time he doesn't get obsessed with making things look aged he ends up with this off size bolt head.

Nicely done, Adam!

Thanks for showing something that didn't go perfectly.

I laugh every time I read giant referring to that little nut and bolt you have there.

I just watched a video in which he 180'd the knob adjustment for threading rods. I wonder if the problem he fixed three years later (13 days ago I believe the video was) affected the thread pitch with his nut and bolt here? Adam, can you measure the threads and see if they line up with what you'd had the lathe set to, or whether they're off?

You wouldn't have caught it if you never changed the threading settings as the nut and bolt match...

I know I'm several years late to the party, but I remember doing nearly this exact project many years ago. At my university, in my department, students could not submit drawings to the machine shop until they demonstrated some machining ability. The basic idea was that if a student couldn't demonstrate a familiarity with machine tools and how they worked, they couldn't be trusted to provide well thought-out drawings. This was to fend off wasting the machine shops time modifying drawings with a lot of back and forth. The project was a half-inch brass hex bolt and nut, to be completed on a benchtop mill-lathe combo machine, and the pair I made still hangs out in my office as an engineering professor.

Be careful with sheet metal shims positioned like that in the lathe jaws. Try to wrap them in a way that they’re not spinning knife blades. They’re invisible when spinning and I already saw you touch the material while it was spinning so also don’t do that.

Adam, why did you not use the adjustable angle feed instead of the cross feed to cut the threads? Just set the stop on the cross feed and return to that fixed position for each cut. This would also cause the cut to be almost entirely on the leading edge of the tool reducing the tendency to chatter.

Lathes are so freakin cool I want one

An excuse for the nut and bolt having different size heads: Most wrench sets only come with ONE of each size. Ergo, unless you're going to demand that the mechanic having to work your bolts have TWO sets so he has two wrenches of the same size, you simply make one a size up or down. Make that your story and stick with it.

wow really. pushing your skill limit. who would have thought you would have heard that from the best builder out there. who is with me on this.

So it was actually set to HB3P and I bet that was 4 1/2 threads per inch.

Adam. The lathe thread cutting anomaly you found and corrected recently was so interesting I signed up to ‘Tested’. But I am concerned that this one day build may have a thread pitch other than the one you planned. I believe the lathe setting wheel was installed 180 degrees out straight out of the factory.

Adam matem why not simply put the tap on the end of the gulde and slowly use that, so much easier and a lot more precise, like you explained about the tap and die sets ,use the tap with the right thread count and back its done? Plus your not using coolant as well, which brass is hard and brittle ,where as the tap and die tool sets are hi tensile steel and some are tungsten carbide tooling as well?

I come from the future and I can say that it is not the thread that the chart says

You should always use a thread checker after you did your scratch pass jus to make sure your cutting the right thread regardless of your settings you think is right. Slow down, your in to much of a hurry.

You could just turn around the jaws to clamp bigger dimensions, right? :)

Damn that was nut easy bolt it shure was worth it

Damn that was awesome, good job!

You learn from mistakes ONLY if you find out WHY it happened and HOW to avoid it. You didn't do that, you have no idea why the mishaps occurred. All you did was make something that looks like a thread to random bystanders. Not how to make a proper correct thread. Despite the mishaps you still don't know how to work brass. So your knowledge has increased by 1 limited "experience" and zero PRINCIPALS but it's the principals that skills come from.

Well done! having only achieved hand knurling hammer and bar handles myself, it is a skill. I have known many mechanical geniuses. My wife's father invited the Diamond Knife while working for DuPont in Delaware. In my past as a machine tech I was in their many machine shops. The ones in Wilmington had 6X6 oak beams on end for the floor. Lathes, milling machines bolted down. He was a refugee from Hungary, after the Diamond Knife he worked on other projects. As a moon light job he repaired old electric organs. The kinds that used strings, gongs etc operated by an motors. The greatest machine work I saw finished was a scale model of a WWII P47. It was the fighter flown by a Dupont. He had a real on in hanger in Toughkennon PA. The scale model had fully operating landing gear. I believe it was the first generation that the gear folded up into the wings. He quickly repaired my several MGB's. One afternoon he was winding up a new gas engine for his RC plane flown in the flats of Delaware. My wife's younger sister there with her husband a true idiot. The engine was buzzing to a whine as Steve tweaked it. The guy asked and poked his finger at the invisible whirling propeller. It small version of the scene from Indiana Jones. We all watched as his finger grew shorter. The next summer at a BBQ he got impatient with the slow start to the charcoal. He grabbed the can from his lawn tractor and pored it on the grill. Lucky or not the whole thing went whoosh, his other arm lost hair and the can shot up 50 ft. Everyone ran while he stood stupified as the can came down.

Should have followed this up with making a 1:1 replica of the original bolt using the same techniques (i.e. no thread taps!) 😅

Looks like they should be mounted on a pedestal as an achievement award. Amazing job! And watching you accomplish it is an education, in so many ways.

What are those Markers your always using??

My wife always ask me: "Why??" and my answer ALWAYS is ..."Because"..😂

I'm pretty sure the spike at the thread end should have been countersunk into the end of the bolt for stability. Then you can turn the item much faster and harder

THIS IS NUTS

Спасибо за качественый контент}

Kudos, you deserve it.

Adam, ive been enthralled watching you cut threads. I remember when I was taught to cut a thread and then triesd to do it, wasnt pretty. One thing yo

fundamental. excellent work.

so you dont know you can turn the jaws around

Tricky to work with soft metals; blunt one of two edges of drill bits to prevent them from threading themself and getting stuck.
This was done with copper and plastics especially. While threading - do one side of the valley at a time. Not easy. :)

This is a very big one, how about a very small one?

I just started an apprenticeship as a machinist, and we're doing threads on manual machines. It's been a huge challenge, but seeing you go through the same issues is really inspiring. Thank you for making this.

I would not be able to live with the nut being bigger than the bolt head. Right or wrong; I would have ground the nut down to match the bolt head. Just saying.

I hear if you have enough of those, you can trade them in and upgrade your weapons to gold variants.

Increasing the bore size by an eighth of an inch every time was a bad Idea. By increasing the size by such a small amount, you risk getting the drill to grip into the Brass. Usually you want to go with your first bore just 1/3 of the final bore size, to prevent your tool getting stuck in the brass. This is especially important when drilling with a hand tool, and for soft metals like Brass and Kopper.