Having put all the effort into making the cutters, Stuart's comment about oak tannins got me worried so I ended up remaking the box. I couldn't face hollowing out the slots for each cutter again, so this time I did it a different way.
The new box is made of ash:
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The screws that hold the lid together are made from 10 mm brass bar, with a flat bottomed 7 mm hole cut in the bottom and an M4×30 mm cap screw epoxied into place. I'm not very happy with the knurl on one of the screws, so there's a new one currently curing in the lathe (with the tailstock holding the screw concentric while the glue cures).
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To save me having to hollow out individual slots for each cutter, I 3D printed a holder for the cutters and set that into the box (which was made in the same way as before: sliced in half, hollowed out and then glued back together). I had a proper moron moment when I was gluing the two halves together: I put the box lid and base into place (with the lid raised by about 10 mm to give some cutting space) and glued the front piece onto the bit with the hollowed out section. It was only as I was taking the clamps off that I realised that in all the playing about and making sure that everything lined up, I'd put the cutters into the box and they were still there! That meant that separating the box from the lid involved some very careful cutting all the way round four sides rather than just chopping straight through
Anyway, this is what it looks like from above: if you look closely you can see the pockets for the cutters (in the bottom half only: the top half is one long opening).
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You can also see the heat-set inserts I used for the M4 screws. Heat-set ones (designed for melting their way into plastic) are a lot smaller diameter than the screwed inserts I'd usually use for wood. The holes were made fairly tight, a disc of masking tape was put on the bottom of the insert (to stop epoxy going up the threaded hole) and then the insert was shoved in with a load of epoxy.
As you can also see in the photos above, I've now finished making all the cutters. They're all essentially the same, except for the 3 mm one (which I also made a spare of), which is a 4 mm body, reduced down to 3 mm near the tip. That gives a bit more "meat" for the adjuster area:
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Although I managed a couple of hours of finishing up this morning, it was 26°C in the garage by 9 o'clock this morning, so I stopped and have pretty much given up achieving anything for the rest of the day
I haven't applied any oil or other finish yet; I'm still trying to figure out a good way of identifying the cutters. They're all stamped with their size in millimetres, but you have to pull them out of the box to be able to see the mark. I'd ideally like to have the size written next to each cutter on the front of the box, but my handwriting looks like a blind GP trying to write a prescription with his dominant hand tied behind his back, so ideally I need a method of making something a bit neater.
My first thought was a 3D printed stencil and a can of spray paint. This is the stencil I printed:
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Being 3D printed, it was made with reference to the CAD model for the cutter box itself, so all the marks are guaranteed to line up perfectly. However, being 3D printed, the text had to be relatively big to get sufficient detail in the numbers, hence the two rows with arrows rather than just numbers directly underneath the cutters. I could possibly have made smaller text with a smaller nozzle, but that's a lot of hassle that I couldn't be bothered with!
The problem I've now got is how to use the stencil (or what to use instead of a stencil). I've done a few trials (on the old box as a convenient material source) using either 3M Spray Mount or 3M Re-Mount (remountable spray mount) and a can of (probably inappropriate!) black spray paint designed for metal. With the Re-Mount, the paint seeped under the stencil and left a god-awful mess when I took the stencil off. With the spray mount, the paint was nice and clear but the whole surface of the wood was left sticky. Trying to remove that stickiness is quite likely to remove the paint as well I guess, so it feels like I need a completely new plan, possibly ditching the stencil idea completely.
Any suggestions?