My daughter is a professional photographer working for a large commercial corporation. Some of the studio cameras use lenses that mount on a lens board as you see here. That is not a real piece of board, but rather a cast aluminum plate. I think the idea is to make lens changes and adjustments easier.

On this one someone bought the lens board with a hole that was too small. Maybe they got a deal? You can always make a hole bigger right? Problem is most people do not know how to make the hole bigger. If they know, they probably don’t have the proper tool.

I was given another lens board with the hole being much larger than necessary. “Just make the small hole half way bigger than the large hole.” I was told. I love those accurate working dimensions. Ha!

It was dang close to being a 2 inch hole I suspected I needed. I bored the small one out to about 1.995 inches. I was actually thinking 2 inch but short is better than taking too much.

My daughter took the lens board to work and sure enough the hole was still too small. “It needs just a hair more, Dad!” was her request. Uh… “What color hair, kinky, curly or straight?” I went for red, curly.

In the pix I went out to 2.010, so I’ll see if I got the color right…

OK, OK… I have kept this to myself for far too long.

There are lots of wonderful micro machine shop sites on the internet. One of them at the top of my list is called Micro-Machine Shop. Duh? I guess that’s not too hard to remember…

The site URL is http://www.finelinehair.com/home/index.htm.  I didn’t know what fine line hair meant; I assumed it could be something to do with ultra precise measurement.  Alan is a stickler for that, as a machinist should. I shortened the URL and it (he) is linked from a large hair products salon.

Yep, the creator of the site is named Alan. I haven’t found his surname yet, but it may be buried in there somewhere. Maybe he just likes to be more private than myself. No matter, Alan publishes a wonderful site for us machine tool addicts.

Somehow I think Alan has more tools and variations and measuring devices than actually exist in the world. Just take any major supply catalog like J&L, Enco, etc. and order one of each on every page. He must own both companies. In any case, he doesn’t have a big investment in full size machines (hence the name “micro-machine shop”) but there is no shortage of accessories.

Many getting started machinist ask me what machines are best for the money they have. You will see here it is not the machines that require the most money; it is what you add to them. Alan has far more money and time than I can ever hope to invest.

Did I mention his photography is nothing less than extreme topnotch?  Alan does in pictures what I do in words. In other words, about 1000 time more.

This is a highly recommended machine tool site to visit and bookmark. You will be very pleased I finally told you, but perhaps you already knew…

UPDATE: New URL

http://www.micro-machine-shop.com/

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