Modern Vespa

Anyone do their own mill work or cylinder boring? Looking for suggestions on more affordable desktop milling machines that are accurate enough to do this type of work. What you got or use for this if you do it yourself instead of taking it to a machinist? Not interested in full size Mills as I don't have room for something like that in my garage.

I'm most likely going to take my cylinder to a machinist, but doing research on boring has sparked my interest in trying to start doing some basic machining myself.

I know absolutely nothing about mills or lathes. But, I do know youtube. I found a guy goes by Pithy Bikes who makes some amazing detailed stuff related to cycling. The use's as he calls a mini mill and lathe which is used in his home garage. Check it out, may be of interest?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGorZsW06rE

I would not normally have expected a bench-top mill to be adequate for cylinder honing. But I'm no machinist, so I may well be wrong. I wanted to comment because I like the idea and am would be interested to hear if you work something out!

Sounds like a lot of interest in this topic, myself included, although not a lot of experience around here.

For those of us with access to Maker Spaces, there's usually some pretty badass machine shops available once you're checked out to use them. At Pumping Station One, the local space that people I know belong to, they have everything from old Bridgeports up to a fully-automatable tri-axial CNC.

Yes there is one near me with multiple Bridgeports but it costs $150/yr membership plus $40 for every day that you want to use metal or wood shop. At that point it's not worth it to do your own boring or machining as $40 is what you'd pay a machinist.

https://www.makerspace.nyc/simemberships?gclid=Cj0KCQjw0brtBRDOARIsANMDykYNumuyiQXs__T59MW4YsjdNyfAaGoCgggucaQQoB05IfPIvHUp1QcaAhg7EALw_wcB

Here in central California, to have a machine shop bore and hone a cylinder usually cost around 100.00. they will use a boring bar for the bulk of the metal removal and hone the last .003. They do not use a hand held brush hone, they use a hone that is part of the boring bar machine. the problem with the machine shops here is that not all of them have a boring bar or a hone that small. To be honest most motorcycle shops don't have them either. A little bit hard to come by.

In times like this I'm glad I live in the Balkans.

My friend just got an old DR177 bored and honed for 10Euro, for an first oversize piston.

Ok everbody just send your cylinders to Jocco he can get them done cheap !!!! ha ha [/img]