SpudFiles

so far i haveonly used this on a wooden piston but here it is
all you need is: a vice, a pipe cutter (normally used to cut metal) and a file

1 take the piston andplace it in the vice
2 grab your pipe cutter and place it around the piston
3 make a grove on your piston about 1/8 deep
4 use the 90° edge on the file to widen the droove made by the pipe cutter until the desired depth is reached

pictures and possible a video comming in about 9 days (il be in disney land until the 26)

hmm, i rly only see this working on plastic or wood pistons. Good idea, cant wait to see pictures

ya it was only meant for wood and plastic pistons but it works really really good

I bet it would work on aluminum rod too, it'll just take longer. Would wear down the pipe cutter after a while, though.

What I thought would help would be after you used the pipe cutter, you could spin it in a drill if it was a small enough piston or you used a bolt on it and then file it like that.

thats probably how i would do it, its also how i currently cut pipes :p sept i use a saw

that sounds great but how will you polish the grove so it will seal against the o-ring? from what i know a layer of clear coat spray paint works on most all types of pistons. for plastic i use a small flame to smooth it out. what i really want to know is if this is even an issue for anyone besides me?

I'm assuming this is to get around the lack of a lathe?

Well the title is "perfect O ring grooves no lathe", so yes.

lol well the whole title didn't how up unitl I clicked on it. How about interior o-rings? anyone got a way around that?

I think there was a good tutorial on how to do interior grooves, but I don't remember.
How about you cut the pipe in half, then couple it back together leaving a small gap between the pipes, making a female groove.

i got no great ideas for interior O ring grooves.



edit: how about something like a rifiling tool (nail on a broomstick) but with an ajustable stopper and a rollers on the back of the nail to keep the groove straight

I made one by cutting about 1/8th inch off the end of a pipe, sanding it flat and gluing it in a coupler. Sliding the o ring up to the ring of pipe, then sanding the end of the pipe smooth and gluing the pipe in the coupler right up against the o ring. It worked well for the piston in the Dragon cannon. That is a 3 inch piston with a 2.5 inch port and 2.75 inch valve seat seal.