# I'm Looking for a tool recommendation for milling a small piece of brass



## jimtyp (Jan 2, 2008)

I have a round piece of brass that is about 3/4" in diameter, but I need it to be less in diameter, say 1/2", what tool would you recommend using to do this task? 

What I do now is put the brass piece in a drill, spin up the drill so it is turning and then press a file up against the spinning brass piece. The problem is it doesn't reduce the piece evenly. That is, the piece starts out as round, but is not quite round after filing it this way, so I still have to do a lot of manual filing.


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## Gary Armitstead (Jan 2, 2008)

jim, 

You would need to chuck the round piece of brass in a lathe and "turn" it down to size. It will take a very long time to file your brass sown to 1/2 inch and it won't be a true round. The process IS NOT called milling. That is done in a different type of machine. In a lathe, it is called "turning".


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## Dwight Ennis (Jan 2, 2008)

Probably the easiest solution would be to buy a hunk of 1/2" diameter brass stock from someplace like onlinemetals.com which sells such material in short lengths (12").


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