Thoughts on building a lathe

[mwmkravchenko]

I watched that series of videos. And I have been decently active on that concrete lathe forum that used to be on the Yahoo forums. That concrete mix in this video begged for more sand in the mix. The as sold concrete mixes are crushed aggregate only the sand acts as a bit of a filler in between the aggregate. I usually mix in about 50% sand and make up for the potential loss in strength by adding in a heaping shovel full of Portland cement. This casting is a first attempt. Not exactly stellar. A good cement mix will have the consistency of a good thick oatmeal. Not runny. And the cross sections can be a fair bit smaller and still posses a great deal of compressive strength.

There is a great channel on Youtube called Tinic LLC. This guy really shows how to make the least amount of concrete the strongest. Including post tensioning methods that make a great deal of sense in constructing a lathe bed and headstock of the greatest possible strength without making a one ton concrete casting.

Do yourself a favour if you want to go through with this and make the bed long enough to bolt a head stock onto the lathe bed. Being able to align it will be of great benefit later. Unless you are capable of doing line boring, then you can pretty much start off with constructing the headstock and slowly have the lathe make the lathe as per the Gingery methods. Parts of what he wrote in his lathe series has application in other lathe constructions as well.