Used to eyeball every offset on my manual mill, now I scribe it out first

For 8 years I just guessed and recut stuff until it fit, but after I snapped a $400 carbide endmill on a tight clearance part I started marking my starts and stops with a sharpie. Anyone else find that taking 30 seconds to mark things saves you hours of rework?

3 comments

3 Comments

laura_wright15d ago

$400 snap, oof. @graygonzalez I felt that one just reading it lol. I started using a sharpie to mark my start and stop points too after I chipped a brand new 3/4" three-flute on a blind hole. The plastic tip on my calipers was slipping so I grabbed a blue sharpie and scribbled a little X where I needed to back off. Took maybe 20 seconds but that little mark saved me from digging into a shoulder I didn't account for. Night and day difference once you get the habit down.

graygonzalez15d ago

Eight years of guessing on a manual mill? That's insane man. I cringed reading that $400 endmill snap. I bet that sound was brutal. Sharpie marks are cheap insurance against that kind of heartache.

milestaylor15d ago

Eight years without any reference marks... that's a lot of hard lessons learned the expensive way. @laura_wright brings up a good point about the caliper tip slipping too, that's another hidden cost of rushing. Did Grayzon actually stick with the sharpie trick long term though, or did he go back to eyeballing it once the sting of that $400 snap faded? I've seen guys go back to their old bad habits after a month or two of discipline.