Do you have any photos of that [hackaday milling]?
Hi Gold. Photos are sitting on a old HD somewhere... :/
Thinking about it again, forgot I made a master metal template from melanite template, which I just dug up. Melanite is still needed for sandwich safety gap (I'll show/explain later).
Because I was surprised how well it worked, I'll have to simulate it for you in a photo, which I wanted to do anyway for photoblog.
Some mistakes while learning:
Gently approach metal in direction opposite bit rotation or you get runaway or chatter (perhaps obvious).
Do not attempt to cut excess material off and get flush cut at the same time. This is not like a milling bit, not at all.
Use cutoff wheel / angle grinder to cut up to 1/4" of material near template, then use router to flush metal to template pattern. Too much feed, too much metal, and you get massive, scary kickbacks. Mock-up to follow.
[Wirelacing] on the fly doesn’t work very well which is why I do it the way I do.
Yes, very hard to make perfect! Totally see how a jig would help. The thought of tying two dozen simple ring knots feels like ...cheating... but I'll give it a try on few remaining that are not yet laced. Thanks!