I made a reference to projects that "pay the bills around here". Here are photos of one of them. Part of the plate cavity of an Armstrong 3500 Watt FM transmitter got "tired". The finger stock for the sliding part of the plate tuning control started burning up, and went into a runaway condition, as the remaining fingers had to try to handle the RF current. Factory had a replacement sliding ring, but "good luck" on the center tube. I dare not try to run it with all the pitting, that would just burn up the new finger stock ring (the last one the factory had in stock) so time to fire up the lathe.
View of burned up part before machining.
OK, stepping back a bit, I did not have a bull nose center large enough to handle the 4" nominal tubing. No way I was going to try to turn this without both ends supported, so I had to make one out of a chunk of 6061 aluminum.
4 inch diameter 6061 blank
I needed to be able to turn the majority of the outside diameter, so the first order of business was to cut a hole, to allow clamping on an inside diameter.
Finally turn a slight taper by setting the compound side at 2.5 degrees.
All done!
I had to take about 0.010 off the part to get rid of the pitting, yeah, it burned not only through the silver plating, but the copper base coat as well. No pits and ready to go to the plating shop. For what it's being used for it does not need to have a mirror finish like a flute or silver serving dish.