I have no real skills... just bluffing my way through. <grin>

**BillKealey** · Jul 11, 2017, 11:39 PM

Hello everyone, my name is Bill.

My late father was a machinist. I learned to repair engines from him and worked with him in his machine shop my last year of high school. He passed away just before I picked up my very used and abused Craftsman/Atlas early 12" by 24" metal lathe. I am teaching myself how to use it and am looking at a LOT of videos on You Tube, etc. Unfortunately, I chose to be born to a poor family and was not smart enough to make myself wealthy before breaking myself and am now retired but extremely busy with volunteer work. I am very interested in making my own tools for my lathe. I do have a 3 jaw chuck as well as several sizes of Jacobs chucks. I have a lantern style tool post that I do use but do not particularly like, but it works. I have a quick change tool post that was made for a machine that I presume was around a 6" - 8" size. It has a large enough footprint and can handle the same tooling that I use but I need to adapt the height to fit my machine and find another way to mount it securely as it has an entirely different... but probably stronger, system of mounting it. I also made a simple but hefty tool holder that works but needs to be converted to an faster way to change tools without having to adjust everything each time. I do some welding of steel and aluminum and play with old tractors, lawn tractors and other small air cooled engines as a hobby. I pretty much get into way too many things to play with. Well, that seems to be my wife's opinion anyway.

I look forward to learning whatever I can here and perhaps can accidentally provide some helpful information from time to time. I subscribe to several other groups for various interest but only have time to read and do not post much any more as my wife is extremely ill and her time with us is most precious to me. Thank you for letting me join. Bill.