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Screwcutting : The Book

Screwcutting is published by The Crowood Press and is available here.

Screwcutting is one of the titles in the Crowood Metal Working series, and it is a guide to the theory and practice of threads and thread-making, whether that is threading a hole using hand tools or cutting a thread using a lathe.

As well as covering the basics of screwcutting, the book examines higher-level and advanced techniques, using projects to demonstrate what can be achieved - fine, accurate and well-finished work.

Projects include:
Female mandrels and ring gauges; threaded male mandrels; a small screw chuck; reducing a bolt by re-machining to a smaller diameter and cutting a new thread; a water heater bleed valve, a large screw chuck, and a machinist's top.
Each project illustrates different screwcutting techniques and approaches.

The book covers:

  • Details of the major threadforms, such as metric, Whitworth and Unified threads, as well as the British Association (BA) and Model Engineering (ME and MME) series, the smaller metric and Unified threads, pipe threads, and specialist threads such as ACME, trapezoidal and RMS microscope threads.
     
  • Techniques for making threads manually, as well as screwcutting in the lathe.
     
  • Choosing materials, tools, feeds and speeds.
  • Methods of measuring to ensure creation of threads of the right size and shape, to an appropriate tolerance to fit mating holes or fasteners.

The book also contains a comprehensive set of tables of data on the threadforms.

Corrigenda and additional content

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