Thread: Sturdee’s Turning Workshop.

Too many years ago I bought a cheap Taiwanese lathe and a set of turning tools. After the initial enthusiasm it got relegated and forgotten until my daughter got interested in turning after seeing an episode of the New Yankee Workshop.

So the lathe got dusted off and moved into the back part of the workshop and she has irregularly (having to fit in with studies and work) turned various items. She always complained about the lathe and tools not being good enough, but they seemed to fall on deaf ears.

However at the WWW Show last year I did some hands on turning with Tim Skelton’s workshop and turning on a good lathe and with good tools rekindled my desire to learn to turn and upgrade my equipment.

So I bought a new lathe, being the MC900 version from Hare & Forbes at a good price and started to get the various tools and accessories that I wanted.

The lathe is bolted onto the bench, has dust collection near it as well as compressed air. I made some timber banjos to hold the lights which are switched from the front of the bench, and installed an emergency switch to turn the lathe of. I also altered the banjo from the old lathe to fit the new lathe giving an extra banjo.

I have altered some of the open shelves underneath to slide out drawers and have still 3 more to go making the storage of equipment easier.

Here are some photos showing the setup.

Photo 1 is the main view of the lathe.The big red switch is the kill switch. The small red switch operates an existing mini cyclone located in an soundproof box on the other side of the wall. The dust collection hose is like an elephant’s trunk as it can extend to 3 metres and dragging over the floor cleans all the mess.

Photo 2 is the view to the left. The fan mounted on the thicknesser helps to keep me cool.

Photo 3 is the view of the wall behind. Got a little bit of sandpaper in grits from 80 to 320.

The remaining photos show some of the drawers I’ve made to organise the bits and pieces.

Still much more to do but it's a start.

Peter.