Building a George Thomas Pillar Tool

My recent bout of insanity consists of wanting to build a Pillar Tool using my Taig lathe and mill. Right off the bat I looked at the price of the castings and the difficulty of machining large bits of cast iron and then thought aluminum. I had some chunks of cast aluminum, being cheap with a small shop I don't have any power cutting tools so I used a hacksaw. I sawed up 3 pieces of aluminum 1 1/2" thick x 5" long. It took about 20 minutes each... Good exercise!

For most anything we do on Sherline and Taig sized machines, why not use a hacksaw? Cheap, reliable and very safe.

The top and the bottom must be parallel, so I bolted the chunks directly to the mill table and flycut them off. I also flycut the sides, but I used the Taig vise for that exercise since that was more a cosmetic operation. There is no easy way on the Taig mill to flycut off something 5" above the table and I don't have an endmill that's long enough either, so I faced off the ends on the lathe, using it like a horizontal mill.