Building a lathe

koyote

koyote

Joined
Mar 29, 2007
Messages
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I'm needing to upgrade my shop a bit- I've been living in the old school days for 3 years, with a belt grinder and a harbor freight baby drill press, an angle grinder with cutoff wheels, and a seldom used buffer as my only shop tools.

A while back I got a bandsaw, which helps a lot.


I'm finding- both for the knife shop and for my son's education and projects, that I need more. But affording more is an issue. I'm going to go ahead and buy a mill this year, but getting a lathe is a huge issue.

I found this:

http://www.vintageprojects.com/machine-shop/lathe-modelling.html


Grab the PDF and read along.

So far, I'm changing the length of the ways to 18 inches. I'm hoping it will be sturdy enough to hold that. I may raise the stock spindles another inch or so so I can turn grinder wheels at a reasonable diameter. spec is 4.5 inch, if I raise an inch I'll have 6.5.... if I go 2.0 inches higher I'll be able to turn contact wheels......


photos coming after I get a few more hacksaw cuts done and square everything up for the bed build.
 
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okay, here's the ways bed and feet all cut out. I'll clamp together and drill the holes soon. as soon as I figure out which bolts I have on hand. I should paint it, too.

2010-02-03-0002.jpeg
 
I got the whole bed assembled today, but got rained out before I got to painting and photographing.....
 
Okay, had a major shop rebuilding going on all weekend and into the week (weather combined with gear combined with some feedback from a mastersmith)

And I have a 6 year old son- the one with his own drill press- so now I'm making a small metalworking lathe AND a modellign size wood/plastic turning lathe.

The red one is the bed for his project, I'll rig up a drill for a headstock on that and then drill out a tailstock and a make a tool rest and he's good to go. I'll put a dimmer switch on the mounting instead of the trigger for the drill, that way he'll be able to set his speed. You lose a lot of power at the low end with that style variable speed on an ac motor, but this is for balsa wood and plastics.

The green one is mine. Next.... working on the headstock. I need to find the parts, or make a mount out of some bearing surfaces I could rip out of some old junk gear.

2010-02-11-0002.jpeg



2010-02-11-0003.jpeg



2010-02-11-0004.jpeg
 
I should get more photos! It's two lathes now, and off and on as weather has allowed (no space big enough under cover) I've been lapping the top of both beds. doesn't really take all that long.
 
I got distracted making a fly cutter to surface the bed!

I'm mostly lookign at bearing right now, so I can drill out the headstock. I think since this is a tiny lathe and I have extra chucks that will work, that I'm going to do a 1/2 inch 20 thread on the spindle, but the spindle will be some standard size I can get bearings for. 5/8 or something.
 
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