Home-made Lathe

[Dr.Al]

This is a photo of a home-made woodturning lathe that I made over the course of about a month (from 8/2/2024 to 10/3/2024):



The design was heavily influenced by the sizes of various bits of material I already had lying around. The only things I bought in order to make the lathe were a motor (£10 from ebay) and a variable speed drive (£50 from amazon). Everything else was stuff I had lying around (although I have to admit I did have a rather ridiculous amount of material lying around waiting for a project ).

I'd never even used a wood turning lathe before, so I had a lot to learn!



The lathe has a 128 mm centre height, so can swing a maximum realistic diameter of about 250 mm. The bed is 1 metre long; I haven't measured the maximum between centres distance but I'd guess it's about 700 mm or perhaps a bit less. Both headstock and tailstock have MT2 tapers; the headstock has an M33×3.5 thread for mounting a chuck. I've tried the variable speed drive with spindle speeds up to about 3500 rpm, although I mostly run it much slower.

It was, without any doubt, the most challenging and complex metalworking project I've ever done, but I really enjoyed the process of figuring out how to make it, especially figuring out how to make the "banjo" (tool rest mount) move back and forth, rotate, and slide along the bed and then lock with a single lever.

I filmed my first (and second) ever attempt at using a woodturning lathe (also using a home-made roughing gouge):

While I was making the lathe, I posted regular updates on my website. There is a 36 page build log (with 396 photos and a couple of short videos) describing everything I did when making the lathe. The build starts at this link: https://www.cgtk.co.uk/woodwork/powe...the/blog/page1

I also made a simple "Lazy Susan" tool holder, with skateboard bearings to make it rotate freely:





Some of the things I've made with it so far. Firstly, some new handles for my chisels:



Secondly, a small bowl and some pens and pencils:



A big beech bowl (made mostly to try out turning something close to the maximum diameter the lathe could handle):

[Jon]

Congratulations Dr.Al - your Woodturning Lathe is the Homemade Tool of the Week!

This is an excellent woodturning lathe build, and the 36-page guide on your website will make it much easier for other people to build on their own.

Some more nice builds from this week:

Surface Polisher by troyhaack
Precision Vise Square Modification by Mook
Tap Follower by Philip Davies


Dr.Al - you'll be receiving a $100 cash prize, in your choice of Amazon, PayPal, or bitcoin. Please PM me your current email address and prize choice and I'll get it sent over right away.

More importantly - this is your 5th Homemade Tool of the Week win!

You join these other 5-Time Homemade Tool of the Week winners: rgsparber, rossbotics, Christophe Mineau, Brendon, Frank S, mklotz, Vyacheslav.Nevolya, brianhw, LMMasterMariner, jjr2001, Tuomas, olderdan, tonyfoale, bobs409, thehomeengineer, celsoari, Stevohdee, Dimitris Polychronis, warsztatOdZera, Mark Presling, AB-SHOP, Occasional machinist, and My MiniCrafts.

You'll notice the 5-Time Homemade Tool of the Week award trophy graphic in your postbit beneath your avatar.



Here are all five of your Homemade Tool of the Week winning tools. Congrats again

Slow Speed Grinder by Dr.Al

tags: grinder, disc

Tap & Die Storage by Dr.Al

tags: storage, tap & die

Shooting Handle by Dr.Al

tags: handle, plane

Tool Chest by Dr.Al

tags: tool storage

Woodturning Lathe by Dr.Al

tags: lathe, wood

[Dr.Al]

I made myself a woodturning lathe nearly two years ago, but over the last Christmas break I gave it some fettling, adding a lever-lock to the tailstock and to the tool post and giving it a lick of paint as well as a few other upgrades described below.

Before:



After:





It also gained a (3D-printed) belt guard and a brass + black shellac cover for a new hole for the tommy bar that locks the spindle (the old one was in the lid and tended to move out of the way and allow sawdust in; gravity helps keep this one closed):





The brass logo was made by painting the brass, using a low power laser engrave to ablate the paint and then etching the result with ferric chloride, before filling in the etched pattern with dial wax. You can read all about that process on page 64 of the build description "WIP".

The following photo (taken before I'd made the brass logo/tommy bar cover) shows the dividing method, with the belt guard open for access and a sliding bar pushed into one of the 12 holes in the dividing wheel:



There is lots more information in the (now 65 page) build process description on my website if anyone is interested.