HEMINGWAY PROJECTS

What’s in a Hemingway Kit?
Check the descriptions offered in our catalogue. In general, we aim to supply everything you will need to complete a given project. You simply add your time, experience and ingenuity!

Materials
We aim to supply all of the materials required to complete each kit. Our suppliers have been chosen on a basis of quality first.

Castings
Patterns are plated in sets and all box work and core placing is manual. Castings are hand poured into green sand. After fettling, all castings are shot or bead blasted to improve their appearance. Both of our current suppliers have been trading in the UK Midlands for around 130 years. Unlike pouring engine blocks at 1,000 a day, occasional defects do occur. These are generally spotted at the foundry or by Hemingway but…. Please check your castings closely before you invest in their machining. Do get in touch if you have any concerns. A level of surface defect is unavoidable but should not encroach on a major datum.

Bar Stock
Hemingway Kits holds around 4 tonnes of various bar materials. We stock around 60 sections of steel, continuous cast iron, brass, aluminium, Nylon and phosphor bronze ranging from 1/16” diameter to 6 ¼” x 1 ½” flats. A majority of our steel is sourced through British Steel (Corus, Tata...). We always favour free cutting grades. Some of our kits have a cutting list running into 30 different sections and lengths of bar materials. Please, when your kit arrives, check through the drawings and plan your use of material. It is not only the profit motive that causes us to limit lengths, we are also conscious that it will be inefficient for customers to have to machine or saw off large amounts of material to arrive at a finished dimension.

Fasteners
A majority of the kits call for imperial fasteners, ranging from 8BA to 3/8” Whitworth. For this reason we only stock these imperial fasteners and a few metric sizes. Sitting here in Britain, this seems reasonable; we have all built up a stock of taps and dies that support this outlook. However, sitting in France or America, our position will not seem reasonable! Doubtless you will want to translate imperial threads into Course and Fine Metric, UNC and UNF and this will not affect the success of your project. We have established a great UK source for fasteners and hold over 60 different varieties of head, threads and lengths.

Gears
For all tools that require gears, they are supplied with the kit in blank form. That is to say the teeth themselves are fully finished leaving you to complete a few features such as threads, bores and and support diameters. The worm and worm wheel pairs required to complete the dividing tools and rotary tables are intended by the designers to be generated as helicals to a pressure angle of 14 ½º. They require dedicated assets and, with low volume runs, may seem unusually expensive. On the positive side however, the quality of our UK sources is indeed first class.

CNC Sheet Material
The Worden Mk 3 Tool and Cutter Grinder is a truly great product, made economically possible through the flexibility of CNC processing. The gauge of the pressings is around 1/8”, affording excellent rigidity in action. Having large dedicated pressings on your bench may well be a novelty. Please remember that many of industry’s worst hand injuries come from handling unprepared sheet materials! Wear gloves and file off sharp edges as a very first step. If you rely on off hand tool grinding today, you should consider the Worden.

Other Stock Items
Hemingway Kits arrive complete! To back this claim we hold a huge variety of often “difficult to find” items. Along with bearings, bushes, springs and arbors, we have more exotic items such as gun-sight graticules, blended woollen felt, music wire and 5-core electrical cable. Wherever practical, we source directly from well-established UK manufacturers.

Drawing & Construction Notes
This is an area where we feel we add significant value for the small workshop owner. In all humility…we think we are the best in the business by a long chalk! With our investments in top-end CAD systems, digital photography and now colour laser printing, we have raised our designers' original works to the latest industry levels. Drawings are generated from digital solid models, which are used to check all assemblies for fit and function. Isometric, sectional and detail views are included, together with a full bill of materials and machining sequences for any complex operations. Our construction notes, generally composed by the designer, allow you to understand the importance of each set-up and how it fits within the overall plan. Typically, the notes include photographs, which are invaluable for describing an operation.

Please note however that for the Universal Pillar Tool, Versatile Dividing Head and Headstock Dividing Attachment, George Thomas' book, Workshop Techniques, provides all of the necessary plans and notes. Accordingly, these two projects will arrive without loose drawings and construction notes. Both of GHT's great books are available from us.

Export Suggestions
A parcel from Hemingway Kits can weigh between 0.65Kg for a book to 24Kg (53lbs or almost 4 stone) for a Worden Mk 3 Tool & Cutter Grinder. If you live outside of the UK, shipping costs can often seem prohibitive.

Shipping Rates per Kg
The cost to send a heavy parcel is of course more than to send a light parcel. However, the cost per kg for the heavier parcel can often be half that of the lighter one. Carriers seem to bias pricing against small parcels. If you are planning to build a number of our kits, consider ordering them together in order to reduce your total shipping cost.

Shipping Bands
Below 2kg we will generally send your order using the Royal Mail's small parcel service. For heavier parcels we have agreed just 2 rates with our export carriers (including Fedex and DHL). There is one rate for pacels up to 10kg and another for parcels up to 25kg. Accordingly, an order weighing 4kg is priced the same as one weighing 9.5kg. Try to use our list of kit weights to plan your order.

Essential Items ONLY
Some of our larger kits have an option shown as “Essential Items ONLY”. Our intention here is to provide the lightest possible parcel for export. These kits exclude stock items that, with a little searching, can be probably be found in your region. Generally this would be the bar stock, fastener, HSS tools, bearings, springs etc. These kits include only the dedicated items such as castings and gears.

Visiting the UK?
Perhaps you, a friend or a colleague have plans to visit the UK? We have had great success in the past through sending parcels by courier to UK hotels. A gentleman from New Zealand was able to persuade a salesman from his company to slip a Machin Screw Cutting Gearbox and a GHT Rear Tool Post in his return luggage, saving over £120 in shipping costs! None of the materials in our kits are considered hazardous and each will have a sales receipt included that should satisfy your local customs department. Ambitious customers will need to research excess baggage rates!