Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing need idea's, slotting a recess

I need to cut a slot along the the sides of a 3/16ths milled slot. Each slot needs to be a 1/16th deep and a 1/16th below the surface. The profile, when viewed from the end, needs to look like an inverted "T".
I can't find any slotting saws 1/4" or narrower, and I can't get in from the sides to make the cut with a small end mill. Even a jewelers file seems large for the job. My Dremel tool bit sets don't have the right tool either.
Anyone aware of any milling or rotary tool bit for the job?, or a way to make a draw tool scraper for the job?, maybe even a miniature fly cutter?
Much help needed and appreciated.

What you want is a narrow width Keyseat cutter. Travers ( www.travers.com) carries them in sizes clear down to 1/64" face width.

I made the same sort of cut with a single pointed tool made form an old end mill. Worked just like a flycutter. GD

corelokt, how wide does the slott need to be?i have a 2 3/4 x.051 slotting saw with a 1" arbor that you can use if you have access to a mill. enco & jsc both sell slotting saws in varoius thickness down to a few thousands thick

If I'm understanding him correctly he is trying to cut a very small T-Slot like on a mill table. A slotting saw ain't gonna do that...especially one of the size you described.

The cutting tool I recommended is made to do that job.

I've made cutters like that out of a 5/16" endmill. You need a surface grinder and a whirlygig. I undercut the endmill down to 3/16" leaving the flutes @ 5/16" diameter by 1/16" long. Cutter looked like a minature "T" slot cutter. I use it to cut the slot needed for a S&W "T" nut used with their adjustable rear sight.

Got it! Had to make a reverse image of the cut into a piece of key stock, mill a recess into the rifle barrel of my girls crackshot and then solder it into the recess. The slot had to be a quarter inch wide at it's widest and 3/16ths at the top. Couldn't find anything that small. I spent hours with a piece of drill and hand files making a tiny cutter, just to find out my dyslexia had flared up and the cutter was positioned to spin the opposite of my mills rotation! I was able to leave a little extra metal in the key slot below the barrel to reinforce the hold it keeps on the extractor, so that worked out well also. Thanks all.

i see what he was talking about now, i was thinking something completly different.
back when i was working at a machine shop we made several cutter like that. we would just take a standard endmill, put it into the spiner jig on the toolgrinder & grind it into a mini keyway cutter. the shop i worked in specialized in plastics & we hand ground most of our own tooling becuase most of it wasn't availible from any of the suppliers