Thread: home built woodworking lathe

Originally Posted by jow104

Surfing I ran across this article.
I have never ventured into woodturning but ask forum members if it would be worth the exercise to build such a lathe
http://www.mimf.com/articles/lathe/index.htm

Bet it don't get a CE certificate if you make one.

heh that lathe would fall to bits. that must be one weak lathe. to make a lathe out of would is mad. especially pine. the spinning of the motor would make it collapse. i hope you did not biuld one like that

Yeah, alot of things I have built never stood much chance.

Boasting

I built a photocopying machine back in 1959 for an employer when I worked for a shipping agent in the City of London.

I must admit they puchased an electronic model very shorty after but it cost them thousands.

Originally Posted by Orange

heh that lathe would fall to bits. that must be one weak lathe. to make a lathe out of wood is mad. especially pine. the spinning of the motor would make it collapse. i hope you did not biuld one like that

Advice taken

To build something like that you would not get any change out of about $200, and that's assuming you have an old motor and can score the timber cheap.
If you need to buy a decent motor and pay shop price for timber you would be past $300, he's talking about getting a machine shop to machine a 150mm thread so you could add at least $50 for that, and then you need to buy face plate, head stock and get a spur drive from another lathe.
Even if you made it worth building in terms of cost by scrounging the parts on the cheap, it would flex worse than a GMC and the fit of everthing would be subject to the weather.

For $379 you can get an MC900 which has 3/4 h.p. motor, swivel head, variable speed, cast iron bed and comes c/w faceplate, spur drive and live centre.

You do the sums, the only time you'd build that lathe over an MC900 would be if your mother in law took up turning.
Cheers
Paul

Woody, I built a lathe that will turn 48" center to center. I built the lathe from construction lumber. I estimate the weight at about 150 lbs, cost me about $225.00, american dollars. This included machined headstock spindle and tailstock spindle, one drive center,one live center, new 1/2 hp motor and all lumber and misc. hardware.
There is a Fine Woodworking book on Wood Lathes, do not recall title, there are at least three lathes and drawings in this book. My lathe is very substantial, very accurate. I have been using it for two years and am very satisfied with it.
If anyone is interested I'll email pics of the lathe. In the attachments ,I have a chess table I made with turned legs, and chess pieces turned on this lathe.
The table is honduras mahogany, pieces are maple and bubinga.The squares are also maple and bubinga.The pictures could be better, I used a polaroid camera.
If you build one, you can buy replacement parts from a new lathe dealer, I got mine from Grizzly , I believe the spindles cost $35.00
mike

I still have a homemade lathe made out of wood! Though its now sitting in my wood rack.
It was solid and worked well as a spindle and table leg lathe. If my shed was big enough I would set it up again for turning 8" legs.
It cost about $40 to make but I scrounged bits and pieces.

There you are then.
It just goes to show that those people who are DIYERS can produce something and that makes them happy. Sometimes I suspect you also can purchase manufactured items which are also cost effective.

When your eyes are bigger than your belly (aka wallet) you are motivated to make things.
There's nothing wrong with timber framed machines - in fact there are many examples of high quality wooden machines in FWW.

I cut my woodworking teeth on a bandsaw, lathe, tablesaw and spindle that my late father made............all bolted together as he didn't own a welder. We didn't have electricity on the farm in those days anyway. The holes were drilled with a hand drillpress....used to be bolted onto a pole in the shed and had a little ratchet thing that advanced the quill a little every few rotations of the chuck. Ooooohhhh and don't forget to squirt some oil on the drill regularly to stop the bit overheating! Every hole was a job of love and sweat.

I am sure that with some forethought quite useful machines can be made from hard wood. The original lathes, pole lathes and some treadle lathes were made from wood, I'm sure.Should be a lot easier to make nowadays as at least we can buy bolts of basically any length compared to what was available a few centuaries ago.

If you have an inventors mind/streak, go for it.....look at the solution and succesful end result, don't stare yourself blind against the possible problems and what others think.

Just Do It! The reward will be worth it.

Yes we seem to forget that the cabinet makers in the 18/19th century didn't have electricity and not much steam about either, but look what they produced. We watch the Antiques Roadshow here in the U.K. (do you ever see that one in Oz?) and see some real pieces.

Quote:We watch the Antiques Roadshow here in the U.K. (do you ever see that one in Oz?) and see some real pieces.


No we don't because in Australia we have been there and done that ourselves only last week......... so it's not antique here!

lol




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Orange as a beginner (in your own words) u shouldnt jump in like that ...there are many wooden lathes around ..most of us were born b4 the throw away society existed and money was short (Raising family paying the mortage etc)
so a lot of stuff was made with materials at hand but safety was never compromised. You might note it was a dollmakers lathe so the pieces were prob not that big anyway. Stick around and you will learn quite a bit on the best WW forum in the world and as you have seen your questions will be answered.
Pete

Woody
I just happened on to this thread and have a few comments. First of all one of the woods recommended was yellow pine. Grown in the southern United States, this is a very stable and hard wood, not to be confused with ordinary red or white pine. Also, wooden bodied lathes have been around for a long time. They need to built out of fairly robust timber to withstand our usual faceplate turning, but it is certainly possible. When I was up at Maurice Gamblin's about 6 years ago, I worked on a four foot bowl on his wooden bowl lathe. We have since rebuilt it in 5" angle iron to accomodate the weight of the yellow birch burl for the 6 foot bowl he is now working on, but the wooden one handled up to five feet with no problem. The question as always when building a home made tool is, "is it worth it?" only you can answer that question. i use a commercial lathe but make most of my own tools, poartly to save money, but mostly because it is fun.

Darrell
www.aroundthewoods.com