The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Tool Chest Another new toy!

For several years I've been shopping for a Sunnen hone, and I scored a very nicely reconditioned one on Ebay a few days ago. Once my hands mend from the carpal tunnel surgery I just began yesterday, I'll be acquiring tooling a little at a time and building a recirculating system for honing oil. I'm also working on building a dedicated boring fixture to replace the compound rest on my lathe carriage so I can bore the Babbit material out of splash-oiler connecting rods. Between a precision boring tool adapted to the lathe spindle and the hone, I should be able to start supplying engine builders with insert-bearing rods.

I've found a source for bearing shells that cost a fraction of what the dedicated conversion items do, and they're much more available. Certain sizes of splash-oiler conversion bearings are getting almost impossible to find, even from people who claim they have them in stock!
Jerry

Jerry
Just saw this thread.
A little off topic but, my first machine shop job before I graduated high school was at Sunnen Products in Maplewood, Mo.
Deburred thousands of the alum cast parts for the hones.
Then they moved me to the milling dept. and more production machining.
They would not let me set up the machines, but would just show me how to put the part in, press the button and take the part out.
It was a good company to work for and took care of their employees, but, production work was not for me.
Quit after 5 months on the advice of an older guy that said, get out before you get trapped in this job to pay bills.
Took his advice and moved on.
One of the few good decisions I have made over the years.
Back on topic.
Sunnen Hones are the Cadillac of hones. In my opinion you can't get a better hone anywhere.

On a side note, did you know that Sunnen also had a plant in Canada making FDS products?
Edit: Just for you Jerry.
http://www.sunnen.com/gun_barrel_honing

Don

Interesting! My son in law hired on as a machine operator with Remington about 2 years ago when they opened their new factory in Huntsville Alabama. He was running a deep hole drill and a CNC mill. He moved up pretty quickly to a tool room machinist's job due to having 20-something years experience as a CNC tooling salesman. I've got a bunch of his leftover sales samples in my shop, and they can be adapted pretty well to oldtime manual machines!
Jerry

Jerry,
Get well soon from your surgery. Get some hand therapy. It should help your recovery.
Jay

Several years ago I bought a large General hone from a guy who retired from rebuilding 50's and 60's engines. The trough is big enough for any gasoline engine block, but the thing is huge and I have it stored in a former refrigerated van. The van has a flat floor. I have been toying with the idea of setting up a machine shop just for old engines in the van and putting an AC unit in place of the refer unit to control humidity.

The trouble is that I am still running trucks to make a living. At the moment we are building a Cummins from block up. An oil cooler failed. Coolant got into the oil and tore up the crank. And with wet sleeves, we don't need a hone.

You're probably thinking about the Sunnen CK (Cylinder King) automatic hone that's used for boring and/or honing cylinders. The one I have is a fairly small bench top unit that's intended for fitting piston pins, reconditioning big ends of connecting rods, and other precision fitting of small to medium-sized holes. The Sunnen hone I ran at the machine shop was a somewhat larger floor model that would handle mandrels up to close to 4" in diameter. I reconditioned a bunch of Cummins and Detroit rods and a few Caterpillars. We had a dedicated boring machine for wrist pin bushings that would hold a .0002" tolerance without honing, but that thing cost $60,000.00 and had only one purpose- - - -precision boring wrist pin bushings. A 2" diameter solid steel wrist pin about 5" long on a Cummins engine puts a huge amount of load on a bushing, so every one had to be fitted perfectly.
Jerry

I got the machine from a guy in El Paso that builds reporduction Harlies from scratch just like the originals were. The guy gave me a several hour tour of his shop.

https://www.facebook.com/TimelessMotorCompany/

I'm not sure what the original purpose was, but it is very large. They were were trying to get into rebuilding antique engines. The engine guy retired and they had all they could do building motorcycles at the time I bought the machine. He gets over $100k for a completed cycle. Probably more lucrative than building engines.

Hey Hotrod Lincoln, take care of those dancing fingers! I hope you have full use back soon!

How about some pictures of your setup Jerry when you get fully recovered. You can get one of those fancy phones pretty cheap these days. How bad was the CT surgery?