I’ve been working hard for the past month or so machining several different nozzle molds for different sized engines. So far I’ve made 5 of them, for engines of size C, D, and E. I plan to make one more for F-size engines. Boy have these been a huge pain on my tiny lathe! Because these parts come in contact with oxidizers, they need to be made of stainless steel, and my tiny lathe is not really rigid enough to take large cuts in such a hard material. I can normally get away with 20-30 thousandths in mild steel, but stainless maxes out at about 10, so making these parts took between 30-80 facing cuts just to rough in the features. All in all I think I spent at least 24 hours of total machining time making these! Fortunately, if I don’t accidentally drop them face-down they should last me forever.
