Seudo Lathe !!??

[Richard0470]

As promised here are some photo's of my home made lathe, and with the help of a buddy with contacts in metal fabrication, a handy chuck was born (from my design of course) + the latest round of floats cranked out in a number of hours. Drilling the centres for the stems was the troubling part except for another handy jig. I'll post those seperately.

[thefixer]

Nicely done Richard. Obviously more than adequate for the required task of float making. Cant see too many hollow forms coming from it though:D

Cheers
Shorty

[joe greiner]

Nice setup, Richard, and seems perfectly suited to the mission at hand.

It's unclear how the tailstock is locked into position. Also, I see no toolrest support. I did my first "turning" on a less elegant contraption (actually a drill press), with wood rasp for rough shaping, and sanding for final.

Joe

[artme]

:B:BI'm getting forgetful or my right index finger is getting weak! I had something to say about this yesterday along the lines of great work.

Great work. :2tsup::2tsup::2tsup:

[Ad de Crom]

Richard, simply is always the best. Nice setup. Good to see that in this forum people walk around with a lot of inventivity. BTW. are that floats for fishing in the last picture?
Looks very good to me!!
Ad :2tsup:

[Arron]

Very nice, probably have enough grunt to make fishing lures as well. Cedar poppers perhaps.

Arron

[orraloon]

Richard,
Well done there. You can probably do small tool handles in it too. Just for a bit of info I got a metal collar from Timbecon to mount a drill to a bench top a few wears ago. Cost about $20. I used it to paint cresting stripes on wood arrows. It is what got me thinking about getting a lathe. So be warned, the force is calling.
Regards
John

[hughie]

Richard,

As you say in your signature, "Necessity is the mother of invention"

Well done, simple but highly effective for the job at hand. :2tsup:

[Richard0470]

Thankyou all for the comments, i'll try and remember who sais what and reply in one. Yes the floats are for fishing, just got to come up with a reliable finish apart from enamel clear, someone recommended shilac, but i might pop down the mould shop in Newtown for some epoxy resin, that might do the trick.

The tail stock is bolted to the base using a 75mm roofing screw into the base which has a 70x45 piece of undressed pine running the full length for rigidity. I spoke to a friend of mine and with the help of his machine shop i'll have a normal live centre milled down to fit in the drill chuck which will increase amount of variance in size i can turn.

A proper Tool rest is in process of being built, there was a block to support the tool but the cheap turning tools are just that cheap and ineffective for this so have gone to heavy duty rasp and a you beaut flexible door sander (purchased from bunnings for $5, see attatched pic) plus sand paper to finish.

No not good for bowls just yet and due to the fact this is such an agricultural contraption it was designed to make floats whilst away at the van on weekends, but i have the bug and have since brought it home to get more time on it, the need/want for a proper lathe is overwhelming, besides with all this great feedback i can't wait to put more stuff on here..... Would love to not be so limited in what i can make now.

:2tsup::2tsup::2tsup:

[wheelinround]

Excellent piece of engineering

I started out using my drill press also and moved onto a Jet Mini