05-18-2018, 02:19 PM
When I lived in Colorado, I had a Brown and Sharp Universal grinding machine that I used with an indexing fixture to grind the cherries. Back then, I sold molds under the business name of Mike's Bullet Molds LLC. There was a lot of old 3 phase equipment in my shop then that I picked up for the price of scrap. When I moved to Indiana, it didn't seem smart to spend $2000 to move a machine that I only paid $450 for so I sold or scrapped all the old 3 phase stuff. Now I wish I had moved the Brown and Sharp. I still have not found a high-speed grinder with the accuracy needed to grind the cherry. One of these days, I may try a tool post grinder on my lathe.
The old way to make a cherry is to turn some drill rod in the lathe to get the shape of the bullet then mill in your flutes. Harden the cutter then get out the stones to sharpen. That process takes a day to do. The process I developed allowed me to make a cherry in 20 to 30 minutes. I created an Excel spreadsheet that let me play with the dimensions. I entered the dimensions and it told me how much the bullet would weigh. Then I would put the dimensions in a CAD program and make a print of the bullet along with all the measurements needed to do the grinding.
The old way to make a cherry is to turn some drill rod in the lathe to get the shape of the bullet then mill in your flutes. Harden the cutter then get out the stones to sharpen. That process takes a day to do. The process I developed allowed me to make a cherry in 20 to 30 minutes. I created an Excel spreadsheet that let me play with the dimensions. I entered the dimensions and it told me how much the bullet would weigh. Then I would put the dimensions in a CAD program and make a print of the bullet along with all the measurements needed to do the grinding.