Cleaning tool for the lathe spindle bore

[Dimitris Polychronis]

Happy New Year to all

The cleaning tool for the spindle bore is a tool I've copied from Toolsandmods. It’s simple and efficient; as I’m thinking it now, I should have made it long time ago instead of using paper towels or rags for cleaning the spindle.
Now, what I have made is practically the same with the one from toolsandmods; the only that is different is that instead using fabric for making the cleaning discs, I used soft leather (approximate thickness 1.3mm).



In toolsandmods it’s stated that the discs were made from windows cleaning cloth with a diameter of 28mm; now, since I decided to use leather I had to cut the discs into a smaller diameter (leather is definitely harder than window cleaning cloth) for an easy push or pull action of the tool inside the MT3 spindle of my mini lathe.

I found (based on the thickness-hardness of the leather I had) that the right diameter for the discs had to be 26.5mm.

For cutting the discs I made this round cutting guide which accepts a 5mm hole punch in its center


The discs were roughly cut with a knife


Then the discs were pressed evenly and locked in a simple shaft; the final diameter was achieved by turning the stack on the lathe.

Not some quality pictures (snapshots from the video)




The overall length of the tool is approximately 325mm

All the best
Dimitris