A fellow club member donated some steam related magazines and other machine shop related 
manuals. While flipping through one of them, I spotted an article on how to square out a round hole. I have been looking all over the place for different ideas on how to do this because the Heislers drive shafts/universal joints require one for each truck. I thought about having them EDM'd out, but I didn't want to expose the assembled universals to the EDM oil which has microscopic steel and carbon particles floating in it. So when I read about using the lathe as a shaper and how to make the tool to do it with, I was sold.
So the first order was to make the tool. The first tool was too large and it could not be driven into the work piece properly. This is a 1/4" sq lathe bit ground on the bias at about a 30 deg angle off the perpendicular. I took a stone to the three working sides and brought up a nice finish. 
Next was to set up the piece and keep the forces being applied off the universal joint's pins. So an Allen wrench was passed through and used as support. Next the tool was lined up with the hole. and the chuck was marked off on 4 equally spaced locations.
This is a top view of the set up. I also set up a magnetic base with a pointer to mark reference for the 4 locations on the chuck.
This last pic is when the process is about half way done. It took about 4 hours to get it close to size...and that was the easy part. Next came the almost 6 hours of filing and fitting and keeping the hole square and true. It's been almost 20 years since I pushed a file that long and brother do I feel it.
