Fly cutter for the lathe

[mklotz]

Years ago, when I was still using a milling attachment on my lathe, I decided to build a large scale fly cutter. I was tired of overlap marks that occur when making multiple passes on a workpiece and wanted something with a large enough swing to allow one pass flattening.

The body is a piece of C-channel fitted with a sturdy spigot turned from hex steel. A slot in the channel allows for adjusting the radius on which the tool holder is placed. The tool holder itself is a drilled-out bolt into which the cutter fits, held in place by a small setscrew in the head of the bolt.

This view shows the back of the device...

In use, the spigot is pushed back into the chuck until the back of the tool holder seats on the face of the chuck. This minimizes bending of the device under load.

I haven't used this thing in ages. Once I got a mill, I built a monster two-stage fly cutter that is far superior. It's described here...

http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/m...y-cutter-27295