Unimat Lathe Cabinet for Storing Tooling and Supporting the Lathe and Milling Machine

[Paul Jones]

A couple years ago I built a small cabinet for my old Unimat SL lathe and added a separate vertical column for the milling/drilling head. The cabinet has only one drawer with four separate compartments, and one of the compartments has two layers. The cabinet sides, drawer, and drawer front are made from ¾” red oak and finished with clear satin polyurethane. The top and bottom are made from ¾” Melamine particleboard laminated with a thermally fused resin coating to provide a durable and oil-proof hard surface. I made the knurled knobs from ½” aluminum rod.

The cabinet sits on four rubber feet whereby the combined weight of the lathe and tooling stored in the drawer provides enough weight to keep the lathe from moving on the workbench. The cabinet top has threaded brass inserts for holding the milling column base to a 1”x3”x12” aluminum bar using cap head screws. The lathe sits on two 1”x1”x6” aluminum riser blocks that are held in place with flathead machine screws inserted from underside of the top sheet of melamine and secured with washers and brass nuts. The two sides and back of the cabinet contain 10-32 threaded inserts I made for cap screws to hold optional Lexan splash shields when fly cutting with the milling head.

More information about the Unimat lathe modifications can be seen at http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/m...00-lathe-10111 .