Thread: Wood v. machine lathes

The main difference, Metal working lathes hate dust, too many moving parts.

The other main difference is that wood lathes use hand-held tools on a tool rest and metal lathes use tools mounted onto a moveable holder.

Then there's pattern-makers lathes.........

Thanks for that information. The reason I asked was I saw the thread here on making a locomotive boiler , and it looked like a machine lathe

Jill, it is woodturning lathe that has had a compound rest fitted. Very much like a pattern makers lathe.

You should be really confused by now.

I find that most lathes can be classed as one of three kinds.

Metal turning: These have all the bells and whistles. More knobs, screws and levers than the driver's cabin of an old steam locomotive. Usually covered in oil... and if used to turn wood for some silly reason, sawdust stuck in the oil.

Woodturning: As has been said, the tools are held by hand and, apart from positioning adjusters for the tool rest and tailstock, often only have an on/off switch. And maybe - just maybe - a switch/lever to adjust speed. (Oil? Oil? You mean we're supposed to lube these things? )

's lathes. If, amongst it's controls, there are a stick-shift gearbox or a clutch pedal then it's probably a job. (I'm still waiting for one with indicators.) Very specialised, excel at spinning large telephone poles down - well... across - the highway.

I have turned metal on a wood lathe and wood on a metal lathe.

Recently I moved my 1050 pound metal lathe across the shop. To make space I piled everything in that corner on and around my wood lathe and bench, right to the ceiling.

I was using a stubby shovel to dig behind the metal lathe to pour concrete and broke the handle. I grabbed a hunk of split dry red oak fire wood and chucked it in the metal lathe, three jaw chuck and pointy live center. For a tool rest I put a tool holder in the compound parallel to the bed. It was only about 4 inches long, but with a turn of the crank I could move it up and down the bed.

All I could reach was a junky Chinese 1 inch accursed skew, so I used that to knock the corners off and finish the handle. I had less trouble with catches than with my good high speed steel accursed skew.

Earlier I had bought some 33mm X 3.5 nuts to make accessories for my Hegner wood lathe. I wanted to make a hand wheel. The nut needed to be reduced in diameter to fit into a recess on the outboard side of the spindle.

I threaded it on the inboard side, ran the tool rest up close to the nut, and using a heavy high speed steel square ended scraper knocked the tops off the hex nut for about half the length. I finished by using a mill file on the rotating nut until it was a snug fit in the recess.

The scraper was in no worse condition then when cutting dry locust, and it removed metal almost as quickly as the metal lathe.