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April 2010 Group Picture
There are hobby machinist groups scattered around the USA including a small HSM group in Connecticut. Our CTHSM group is congenial and freewheeling:
no rules, no dues, just people getting together to learn new techniques plus share thoughts on machining and other topics that arise. Meetings are held in
member shops, nominally on the second Sunday of the month at 2pm. Anyone interested in attending a meeting please contact me
(via the link below on this page)for more info and travel directions.
The December 10th meeting was at Paul's shop in Darien, CT.
Ralph is working away on the boiler for his locomotive. These parts are 1/8" thick copper; lots of hammering and re-heating to anneal in shaping them. There are 20 holes about 1/2" diameter for boiler tubes - copper is not easy to drill so this was another challenge.
This is mostly tooling used to produce the gear cutters shown. At far right is a completed gear cutter on its arbor. Eric is working on a complex clock which displays seconds, minutes, hours, day of the month, and month - and it handles leap year! This requires lots of gears....
At the November meeting we discussed a CTHSM group project of building Kant-Twist clamps. Craig has completed plans for 2", 3", and 4" clamps. At the December meeting we discussed getting estimates for laser cutting, material choices, etc. Cost will dictate interest by members so that is the critical next step. This is a new area for our group so there are lots of details to work out.
We skip the January meeting because of Cabin Fever. The February 9th meeting will be at my shop in Newtown, CT (weather permitting).
As usual, bring items for demonstration and/or discussion. Plus items for the sale/swap/free table.
Home shop machining is often a solitary hobby, as are most hobbies now according to "Bowling Alone".
The CTHSM group is an attempt to get area HSM's to know one another and thus make our hobby a little less solitary.
The much larger NEMES HSM group is 2-3 hours away so we share some members and occasionally have visitors from that group.
The CTHSM group has been meeting since November 2008, mostly on the 2nd Sunday of the month at 2pm, but we deviate from this with some regularity. The January meeting is not held since Cabin Fever conflicts, February has seen a couple meetings cancelled due to weather, the May meeting is on the 3rd Sunday to avoid a conflict with Mother's Day, and we don't meet in July because many members are on vacation. Over time our meeting schedule has become predictably irregular...
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Pictures from our unusual "Music Machine Meetings"
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