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):