The use of smaller steel bar stock or angle iron may be necessary in some areas where the
½" x 12" steel plate may be hard to find. Pieces of truck frame rail could be used.
Alignment of these "foundation" parts is critical, and substitutes for the preferred steel
plate may be harder to adjust. Don't let the difficulty of making a sliding fit deter you from
getting started. Build a fixed-bed lathe version first and later add a MultiMachine-type
vertical slide to the rear of the block.
Here is one kind of substitute
that could work well: "doubled"
frame walls that are common in
big trucks. The rivets can be
ground off and the two pieces
made into a good sliding fit.
The sixth MultiMachine secret is a device similar to this that
can be clamped to a shaft. It can have capscrews that pass
sideways in order to push or pull another device or can be
made large enough to do dozens of jobs by itself. More
about this later!
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