Baffle drilling

[jrcflyer]

Any good suggestions on how best to hold a 1.355 baffle under a drill press for drilling this accurate??
I thought of using a small lathe chuck for a vise, but i don't have one. I appreciate all your feed back alwsys. Thank you in advance.

[garredondojr]

you mention a lathe chuck....do you possibly own a lathe? if so this would be your best option to keep things concentric.
and drilling followed by reaming for best results.

[a_canadian]

You could have a machinist in your area make you a clamping jig. Wouldn't have to be complicated. Just a piece of aluminum, maybe 1/2" thick, with a hole bored 1/4" deep to the OD of the large end of the cones plus maybe 0.05". Then a smaller through-hole perhaps 1/4" smaller than the main recess to allow flexing, and a 1/8" slot at one side going right to the hole from the outside. Clamp that in a drill press vise around your cones and you've got a stable, secure platform for perpendicular drilling of bore holes. You'll want to have the side opposite the slot around 1/4" wide or so to allow flexing, not too skinny and not too wide. Most machine shops will have a scrap chunk of aluminum (or use steel or whatever) sitting around which will do the job. I used a chunk of 3/4" thick, 1.5" wide 6061 bar stock to make my baffle holding jig for 0.870" K baffles in a 4 jaw mini lathe chuck. Took maybe 10 minutes to make including sawing off the piece.

[Historian]

A recent post on YouTube on making a .22 suppressor had
an ingeniously simple way to hold baffles for drilling:

<< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UuyaVnp93o >>
-gary stuckogh

Drill out a slightly smaller diameter hole in a block of 2' x 3'
wood. Split it and put screws through them to clamp down. Like:
"IRWIN Tools Record Wooden Handscrew Clamp, 4 1/2-inch Jaw Opening "

<< https://www.amazon.com/Tools-Record-Han ... ood+clamps >>

CAVEAT: don't ever hold any part under drill press with finger/hand as you
will increase the probability of loosing a digit!!!

[Historian]

A parallel bar bent tail lathe dog can be used
in many situations:

e.g., << http://qfguides.tripod.com/setting_up_w ... enters.htm >>

Grizzly sells an expensive one but some old Atlas 618 ones
can be found on eBay.

e.g. << https://www.ebay.com/itm/Clamp-Style-Do ... :rk:4:pf:0 >>

or << https://www.ebay.com/itm/ANTIQUE-VTG-IR ... :rk:6:pf:0 >>

etc.

[fishman]

I've used these to hold k baffles for milling. There's a picture in my signature

https://www.sherline.com/product/3750-t ... gle-table/

https://www.sherline.com/product/3-jaw- ... chuck-3-1/