Thread: Free standing toolrest

Start here and also see Vicmarc's designs here.

Hello Mate
In my opinion, we are quite starved for good wood turning suppliers in WA. I would be doing a search of the internet, or visit


Power Tools and Machinary sales
Timbercon
Carbatec

You may wish to join a woodturning Guild as well as an excellent resource.

Cheers
Willy
Jarrahland

(Oh yeah, I have no affiliation with any of these)

Originally Posted by comgreserv

I have just acquired an older Woodfast 400 shortbed lathe and am looking to do some sizeable LH bowls and platters. What does anyone use or suggest that I use? Also now I have new toy I will need to get the basic tools so where is good in WA or is online the way to go?
Thanks in advance.

Vermec is also good here

I've used 2 types; fabricated and cast. They both worked fine, obviously fabricated is a lot easier to make,and to be honest, it's easier to move the lighter fabricated one around the lathe. The goose neck on my cast one is great though.

Have you got the beast installed yet HSS?

Mental note, order monster lathe BEFORE building garage to house it...

Yeah, sure have . It's been going well. I've had to wind the bed back for the first time for a platter. It exploded yesterday though...I'll post some photos of the damage; pretty sobering. Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread.

The garage was only a temporary home! It's in the workshop now.

Hi Comgreserv,

It's pretty challenging to turn a bowl greater than say 375mm in diameter due to the huge difference in travel speed, and hence cutting characteristics of your tooling, of the outer section of the bowl compared to the centre. Platters are even more challenging as then you have the issue of vibration and deformation in response to the cutting tools to contend with.

All this is manageable if you have sufficient control over the speed of your lathe and that is generally not given by a general purpose spindle and bowl lathe.From my experience a VSD speed controller is just about an essential tool.There's also the need for a fair bit of experience and a hell of a lot of skill in conquering those large pieces particularly if they are off balance to start with.

I'd be advocating small learning steps and an awful lot of hours standing before the lathe before you venture into turning anything greater than a balanced 300 mm Dia.blank. Turning very large diameter items is potentially hazardous and needs to be approached as such,

Good Luck,


Old Pete

Originally Posted by comgreserv

I have just acquired an older Woodfast 400 shortbed lathe and am looking to do some sizeable LH bowls and platters. What does anyone use or suggest that I use? Also now I have new toy I will need to get the basic tools so where is good in WA or is online the way to go?
Thanks in advance.