Small box tools

[threesixesinarow]

Here’s a couple box tools I made to use with my little bed and tailstock lathe turrets for taking deeper and more accurate cuts off the diameter than with regular knee tools on relatively long and thin workpieces. They’re basically copied from pictures of existing designs, mostly Levin and Somma.

Like on those the cutter is held more or less tangential to the work, opposite two adjustable supports set back a little to bear against newly cut surfaces. The larger of the two uses hardened rollers in screw adjustable blocks that are held in with dovetails, while the smaller one uses toolbits ground at opposing angles. Both have floating shanks, partly so I can replace them with others for different applications.

They work okay - they’re kind of hard to adjust but that may be just me.

The smaller tool is about 1-1/2” x 15/16” - it uses a 3/16” cutter and 1/8” back rests, and will pass up to about 1/4” work through the body. The bigger one is about 2” x 1-1/4”, uses a 1/4” cutter and passes 5/16”. Both have the tools tilted with 7° side cutting angle as well as front and side clearance, and use 40tpi adjusting screws.