Making a carriage stop/bumper for a Vandercook 320 proof press
Channel: Kevin Martin
Date: 19/11/2021

I'm getting an old Vandercook 320 proof press back into operational condition. A part that was missing was one of the bumper blocks that stop the carriage at either end of its travel. In this video I make a replacement bumper block based on the dimensions of the other three blocks and fit it to the press.

The block was made from cold-rolled mild steel which already had two dimensions correct. The boring bar used carbide inserts, but all the other tooling was high-speed steel. The bar was too large to fit the drilled pilot hole more than about ¼" deep so I had to bore to almost the full diameter going ¼" deeper each time. That involved bottoming out the boring bar several times, resulting in chatter and, a couple of times, breaking the point off the carbide insert. The near-final-diameter hole was large enough for the boring bar so the finishing cuts could be done full-depth all at once.