true horror story

[coater87]

 I was trying to lay out the paint lines on my 4 gallon round badge tank.

 My biggest problem is I am as artistic as a mud puddle. I burned through an entire roll of thin-line tape just trying to get a decent looking panel. BTW, if anyone has a few measures of the 4 gallon round badge from an original tank, I would really appreciate it.

 Anyway, I decided that if I mounted the badges and knee grips, I would magically be able to do this.

 I was trying to put the screws into the knee grip holes, but they were plugged tight with chrome and crap. So I tapped out the holes, and yes on the last hole the tap snapped off.

 So there I was with a brand new, freshly chromed tank with a tap broken off below flush.

 Some years ago I bought an auction lot full off odd-ball junk, and in this lot was a bunch of tiny boxes with little bitty carbide dentist burs that were never used. Maybe the stuff came from a dentist who passed on, or who knows where this kind of stuff comes from.

 I tried it, and I will be damned if it didnt work. It was incredibly slow, I spent over 6 hours working on that tap. The burs just kind of slowly make dust, there are no actual chips involved. Of course I put many, many layers of tape around the hole to protect may tank in case I slipped.

 I had a zero production day, but I am awfully happy to be back to where I started.

Lee

[duTch]

 Onya coater- know that feeling
 My youngsta busted a tap in his 250 cb'onda while clearing the thread,  same thing, tried a few different things and finally bought a (most expensive) diamond tip for the  dremel and did the same thing... trouble was it was jammed in a bodgy helicoil, so then we had to get that out 

[Black Sheep]

And I still have the fun to look forward to. My son kindly offered to take my WD B40 away and replace a rumbling main bearing. Not a difficult job. A year later he dumped a load of boxes in the shed. Not what I was expecting. A closer look at the various remains revealed that he had tried to drill out the front engine bolt. He got it off centre and the drill bit has snapped flush. What should have been a weekend job has now become a full rebuild. Ho Hum.