Home Made Metal Lathe, part 2, finishing the bed and ways

[Claudio HG]

Hello. In this second part video the finished bed and the ways of my metal mini lathe that I am making at home.

The ways are made out of a flat 60x12 bar of cold rolled steel. This kind of bars come reasonably stright and with good dimensional shape, so they are easier to bring down to a good flat surface. To accomplish this I've used the Whitworth method of 3 plates. As I say in the video it was far quicker to bring the parts to a local machine shop to mill and grind them down to flat, but was interesting to try this method which, under certain aspects, can be viewed as a milestone in mankind technological development. And actually it is! I was able to get three flat surfaces with literally nothing more than a scraper, a stone+sandpaper, and a tad of dye ...and a LOT of labour!

Cheers from the Alps, Claudio.