Metalworking Sink or Swim

“If you use surface grinders, lathes, mills, and so on, this book is for you.”
—Machine Shop Trade Secrets

Click on the “Resources” immediately tab above to read the full review.

This is a Print-On-Demand book and is printed upon receipt of your order. Delivery will take approximately 10 to 14 days.

Metalworking Sink or Swim is a collection of priceless tips, tricks, skills, and experiences from a veteran of the trade. It is presented in a way that captures the attention of users and engages them in the process of furthering the art. It includes shop-tested descriptions and illustrations of creative and unique skills and observations from almost 40 years in the metalworking trades.

What’s more, it offers enough material from several metalworking trades to start a great research and development shop. It is sure to be a valuable and time-saving resource for anyone involved in the fabrication of metal. Metalworking Sink or Swim is an essential bedside reader for metal workers. If you also weld, get a copy of “Welding Fabrication and Repair.” You can spend a lifetime learning tricks from old timers or you can read these books and understand what the old timers are doing.

Features

• Written by a shop peer from the perspective of having done the required work.
• Includes nearly 1,000 full-color photos, as well as numerous illustrative stories that help users easily understand the material presented and the techniques provided.
• Contains a chapter on flame straightening techniques.
• Offers many examples of special workholding techniques.
• Covers crossover skills like Welding/Machine, Sheetmetal/Welding, and Design/Management.

Tom Lipton is a career metalworker. He learned to weld at the tender age of nine and has worked in many different job shops that required machine and sheet metal work, along with welding fabrication skills. His industrial experience encompasses consumer product development, laboratory equipment, medical devices, and custom machinery design. Along the way Tom refined his metalworking skills to a high level. He has been awarded six U.S. patents for unique designs. Tom’s hobbies are, no surprise, mostly metalworking projects. He’s also an avid backpacker and motorcycle rider. Between his wife’s requests for custom machinery and his own inventions, Tom is a busy guy in the shop. Nonetheless, now and then he accepts requests to give private lectures and in-plant demonstrations related to the metalworking field. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife, who is also a metalworker and a fine artist besides, together with their Australian cattle dog.

Visit Tom’s blog at Oxtool.blogspot.com 

and see him on YouTube at youtube.com/user/oxtoolco

Commentary from Machine Shop Trade Secrets,on Metalworking: Sink or Swim:

“If you use surface grinders, lathes, mills, and so on, this book is for you. I’ve read it a dozen times and continue to pursue it. I find something that saves me time and money on nearly every project. It and Metalworking: Sink or Swim are essential bedside readers for metal workers. If you also weld, get a copy of Welding Fabrication and Repair. You can spend a lifetime learning tricks from old timers or you can read these books and understand what the old timers are doing.”

Contents

Diving In

• Welcome to Sink or Swim
• Personal Learning Attitude
• Shop Environment
• Thursday Nights
• What’s A Journeyman Anyway?
• Format

Brain Food

• Communication
• Drawing and Sketching
• Minimizing Screw Ups
• Accuracy
• Speed
• Shop Math
• Mass, Volume, and Area
• Angles and Shop Trigonometry
• The Metric System
• Computers and the Metalworker
• Dumb and Dumber
• Want to Make a Million Dollars? Somethings That Really Need to be Invented

Bean Counter Lounge

Get the Shop Set Up

• Floors
• Light
• Food Preparation Area
• Food Consumption Area
• Heating and Cooling
• Workbenches and Tables
• Air Supply in the Metalworking Shop
• Raw Material Storage and Handling
• Material Identification and Characteristics
• Safety Equipment
• Tool Crib
• Benchwork
• Filing
• Saws and Sawing
• Rigging and Lifting

Manual Lathe

• Threading in the Manual Lathe
• Multiple Start Threads

Manual Milling Machine

• Bridgeport Mills
• Suggested Improvements
• Spherical Surface Generation in the Manual Milling Machine

CNC Mill

• Working with CNC Equipment

• CNC Mill

CNC Lathe

• CNC Lathe Programming

The Welding Shop

• Getting Started
• Layout Work
• Some of My Favorite Hand Tools
• Welding Table
• Brake Bumping

The Lost Art of Flame Straightening

• Limitations
• How Flame Straightening Works
• Straightening Shafts and Tubes
• Special Applications of Heat Shrinking

Sheet Metal Shop

• Layout Work
• Blank Length Calculations
• Patterns
• The “Yank Method”
• Box and Pan Brakes
• Forming and Layout of Cones
• Tanks and Baffles

The Abrasion Department

• Sanding, Grinding, and Abrading
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
• Radius Grinding

The Junk Drawer

• Miscellaneous Tricks Without a Home
• Ideas for the Shop Floor

Closing Thoughts

Recommended Reading List