Fly Cutter Attachment for Lathe Faceplate

[Paul Jones]

A few years ago I first saw the design of this fly cutter attachment for faceplates in the book “The Shop Wisdom” by Rudy Kouhoupt. It looked like a great idea to try and it does machine very smooth surfaces. The cutter holder fits into one of my Unimat 2.7” dia. faceplates but the same idea could be applied to any lathe faceplate.

I made the HSS cutter holding part from 0.50” x 0.625” x 0.75” cold rolled 1018 steel. There is a 0.17” deep step milled around all four sides on the backside to allow the fly cutter to fit snugly into one of the slots in the faceplate. This part is held in place with a 10-32 cap screw and two washers. The cutter was ground in a semi-circular form from an old 3/16” HSS drill shank and secured with a 6-32 set screw.

The milled surface finishes created by the fly cutter are very smooth (almost mirror-like) and great for squaring blocks in preparation for other work. An added bonus is the faceplate can be used as an aide with a machinist square in setting up rectangular blocks at right angles to the cutter path (or set up to any other angle).









Thank you for looking,

Paul Jones