mini lathe mods

Hi everyone,

well its been a messed-up few months for me. Filmed a bunch of clips about mods on my lathe, spent a good week editing, voice overing then Power Director decided to crash, bugga. So I started again with Kinemaster, much better app. I bought a wireless mic system which had too much hiss, useless, got money back. Bought a boya mic to plug into my hauwei phone via usb c to do voiceover only to discover it doesn't work with editing apps, had to get open camera app but that has severe static on playback, grrr. So now I'm waiting for a boya shotgun mic to arrive which supposedly works with my phone, we'll see. In the meantime I thought bugga it, I'll upload vid with all its faults and weird narrating (I hate narrating) but really no other way to explain mods, forgive me but here it is.

regards stevoh

https://youtu.be/Nfgn2YaX0Fk

I'm in the process of doing a lot of those mods myself, just got the lathe last week. I'll definitely have to steal your ideas for the change gear nuts, I got my first taste of how ridiculous that system is today.

I think if I was going to add an indexing wheel, I'd put it on the back of the headstock so I could make or 3d print plates with different hole spacings and replace them more easily.

I liked the voice over in the video, I definitely enjoyed watching it and the humor. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks Master juggler, Yr not stealing anything, it's my gift to anyone who stresses with the gear system. Great idea for the indexing plates, look forward to seeing it,
regards, steveoh

Thanks Stevohdee! We've added your Mini Lathe Modifications to our Lathes category,
as well as to your builder page: Stevohdee's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

<div id="blocks"> <div class="block b1 pngfix"> <div class="bimg"> <div> <a href="https://www.homemadetools.net/homemade-mini-lathe-modifications"> <img src="/uploads/234250/homemade-mini-lathe-modifications.jpeg"/> </a> </div> </div> <div class="head pngfix"></div> <div class="left pngfix"></div> <div class="right pngfix"></div> <div class="blockover b1 pngfix"> <div class="title"> <a href="https://www.homemadetools.net/homemade-mini-lathe-modifications">Mini Lathe Modifications</a> <span> by <a href="https://www.homemadetools.net/builder/Stevohdee">Stevohdee</a></span> </div> <div class="tags">tags: <a href='https://www.homemadetools.net/tag/lathe'>lathe</a>, <a href='https://www.homemadetools.net/tag/modification'>modification</a> </div> </div> </div> </div>

Congratulations Stevohdee - your Mini Lathe Modifications are the Homemade Tool of the Week!

This is a useful collection of modifications and a clever video, as usual.

Some more nice builds from this week:

Punchout Removal Tool by rgsparber
Magnetic Drill by warsztatOdZera
Carbide Insert File Guide by JKeetonKnives
Tilting Angle Plate by bouboulas
Jigsaw Sanding Attachment by Christofix
Vise by Kwandotechnic
Jointing Plane by Philip Davies
Mortising Plane by Philip Davies
Quick Vise by fawabros
Drill Press by manshands
Routing Tool by Philip Davies
Decorative Coating by Kovanca Polock
Pin Vise by Crusty
Table Clamp by fawabros
Mill Quill Stop by celsoari
Long Bar Clamp by liberal

Stevohdee - you'll be receiving a $25 online gift card, in your choice of Amazon, PayPal, or bitcoin. Please PM me your current email address and gift card choice and I'll get it sent over right away.

This is your 6th Homemade Tool of the Week win. Here are all of your Homemade Tool of the Week winning tools. Congrats again :thumbsup:

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Great Vid Stevoh, informative and amusing

thanks, ive done a lot to my mini and my 9x20(9x20 is half the quality of the 7x14) these are great littile lathers with a little work and the right person using them.

OK, Great video. Love the voice over and the Minnie voice. I have made many improvements to my minnie. Still have a lot to do. My favorite so far was to scrape the ways under the saddle. Then lap the saddle to the lathe bed. Greatly improved the ability to take a deeper cut. Also added longer brass gibs under the saddle ,big improvement in smoothness and rigidity. Also compound lock. Also I added degree hash marks on saddle. Thanks for posting.

Mike

my mini I bought new is 30 years old or older speedway model 7x14" still looks almost new..from the ones Ive seen lately and the 2-3 year old 9x20 I also bought new , the quality is almost totaly gone now them all. the knurled nuted screws in the vid for the gear cover are nice,I still have allen screws for mine.I think Ill just put 2 studs in it and hand nuts if I need them. the studs would hold it just fine as frogs hair with no nuts. I was going to sell it when I get this biger lathe....but...I had to use little lathe to fix big lathe, I dont know if I will ever sell it or not. one mod I did make that was eazy and fast and helped a lot was to add stand offs for the back splash to be about 1.5" farther back/away from the ways.I allso have extensions for it and my biger lathe, just vynel siding it clips right to it with the built in gorrve in the siding.or some small plastic spring clips. after I get the 9x2o I took off the big quick change tool holders and put on the 9x20,it was way to big for that little lathe but I made it work great, I got one of the cheep ones...yup the $30-40 unit all aluminum... witch wood of been nice if they had made it out of 6061t6 or other hard aluminum even heat treetes cast may of worked better than this soft alumin it's made from. so..do not waste your $$$ on the aluminum setup.unless you just want it for very light work or a pattern to make you own. on a side note....Im into the air cooled vw stuff..12 years ago when building a 2000cc plus engine for my bug I shortened the cylinders on the small 7x14 lathe....Ill be dammed but I cant seem to do it on my 9x20:headscratch:...thus the reason I need to either buy a 10,11 or 12 x?lathe and sell off these or... make spacers to space the head stock&tail stock up a inch....not sure witch way to go,cash is low and Ive done somuch work to the 9x20 to get it dam neer perfect and so quiet running. and the 7x14 is high quality & Ive also done a good bit to it....and unfortunately im in florida...witch has no surplus of machines like up north or cali. so selling may not be a issue but buying may be or shipping will cost!!!!!darn neer 1/2 the machines cost or more.oh well Im in no hurry,and prices wont fall any...
cleaning under the ways on these lathes to get all the bondo out of the way of the tail stick clamp helps a lot with eaze of traveling back and forth, they slap that bondo on, lather it around and take it off in places you can see to make the castings loo clean...but under it's all caked up and nasty on the rough machined serface where the clamp slides.

I bought my Taiwan built 7x14 mini lathe new in 1996. I spent too much time trying to make it perfect and it now runs extremely well. I wish these minis originally
came with carriage locks as a basic feather rather than having to make them ourselves. However the mini lathe is now used only for second operations for small parts using an ER32 collet. All the old mini lathes 3 and 4 jaw chucks are now used as secondary chucks mounted on mandrels to be held in a 12" swing lathe six-jaw chuck.

A good friend and the president of a family company making some of the worlds largest water pumps (up to 200,000 gallons per minute made using 8 foot diameter lathe swings for the housings) decided to replace all of his "small" lathes in the company maintenance shop room with new lathes. He asked me if I would be interested in a free 12" swing x 37" gear head gap bed lathe. The lathe was totally depreciated and hence free to me. He said the only catch was I had to haul it away to my garage shop. I did and it now appears in many of my HMT articles.

Like you with your mini, I still made minor improvements to this larger lathe. It is very precise with a measured headstock bearings TIR of 0.0001" after very slightly adjusting the headstock taper front and rear bearings inside retaining nut/rings (it is a tricky op and if done wrong can ruin the bearings by over tightening). The 12" swing lathe is a joy to use and sometimes I think my mini lathe feels very neglected.

darn your one lucky feller!!! free 12x 37 or 12x anything lathe is a great price to pay!!! I would love a gap bed lathe, somuch more than can be done with them...sometimes. I dont use either of my lathes much at all or either of my milling machines, but it sure is nice to have them when you need them. the lathes come is oh sohandy for many things even resizing pvc pipe fittings and other plastic stuff for all kinds of things. I have a lot of tools&tooling and machines that get little usage.but I can do almost any thing when I need to. I hate going to my brothers to do any thing at all, he has more toys than I do and more **** too.....usually in the way and his shop isn't airconditioned or heated and isn't 6 steps out my bedroom back door either. I hope to get back to using a lot of it toward the end of the year when this current building project is done. I have lots of new tooling Ive never used....
your 7x14 is probably the same as mine. ive done a lot with it.

Hey Mark, yep some lathes have what u want but fail in other areas. It's a bit of a gamble buying the cheapest but apparently some of the bigger, more expensive models have teething probs as well. Keep Yr small one, cheers

Hey Paul, great score on the free 12 x 37,sounds nice, what brand/make is it?

1 Attachment(s)

The 12" x 37" gear head and gap bed (can swing almost 18" in the 6" gap) was made in 1987 in Taiwan by the Dar Sin Machinery Works (DARSIN). It uses very high tolerance Japanese taper roller bearings good (to less than 0.0001" TIR verified with an Interapid 0.0001" test indicator). The spindle is more accurate the longer the lathe runs. The lathe weighs approximately 1,200 pounds and is well built with lots of cross ribbing in the way bed. It uses D1-4 mountings for the chucks. It came with a 3-jaw chuck and faceplate in pretty good shape. Later for the not free part I bought an 8" 4-jaw chuck and finally a 6" 6-jaw set-tru chuck (can be easily set to less than 0.0005" TIR). The 6-jaw chuck is used the most and also can hold another CNC ER32 collet chuck for diameters less than 0.5" (the 6-jaw can't collapse down to these small diameters). The part I like the best is the cross slide and compound ways/gibs are hand scrapped but do have a little wear.

These are the TPI and Metric threads the lathe can cut using the quick change gear selections (except for those with a 30T gear that still requires modifications like I presented in this posting).

Attachment 35750

Regards, Paul