These parts are cast iron. They were over .900″ square, and they had to go down to .750″ square. Unfortunately, they were cooled too quickly after they were cast and the iron was as hard as rock!!
I started using high speed steel cutters on my horizontal mill. I was wearing down the cutters as fast as I was removing material until the cutters were polishing the metal instead of cutting. Steve Alley (Allen Models) offered to replace them with softer castings, but I had already spent a lot of time on them, and I bought a solid carbide end mill which made a big difference.
After I got the castings milled to size, I cut them apart (each casting makes two pedestals).
The next step was squaring the ends and milling the parts to length. Make sure you check your parts often with a machinists square.
There was a lot of material between the two parts, so I sawed the excess off with a band saw before final milling.
File the edges to finish the parts.
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