Woodturning Lathe Build Process
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Posted 8th February 2024
The first thing to do was get a selection of material out from my various dumping grounds:
There should be plenty in there to make something reasonably robust (I must keep reminding myself this is a wood lathe and not a metal one!), although I haven't quite figured out the tailstock yet.
There's a very handy Morse Taper 2 adaptor in that pile, with a straight outside shank (25.4 mm / 1"). Using that as a basis of the tailstock would make things quite straightforward but it would need to move backwards and forwards in something bigger than 25.4 mm diameter. There's plenty of round bar that is big enough, but it's all EN1A or brass (I've also got some EN24T ferreted away somewhere). I'm thinking I'll make a frame out of flat stock (for both headstock and tailstock) and that means welding the body together. As I understand it, EN1A and EN24T are both pretty terrible options for welding (and brass is right out), so I might need to think of an alternative. The brass would probably be quite good as a running surface for the sliding adaptor. One to ponder anyway. It's less of an issue for the headstock as that will run in some bearings so doesn't need to be welded to anything.
I also need to make a firm choice about the headstock and tailstock tapers. Most wood lathes seem to use MT2, so that seems the best option. However, I've got loads of MT3 tooling and about four "blank end arbors" in MT3 size (I was convinced I had some MT2 ones but I guess I used them all years ago). This is all the MT2 tooling I could find (I'm sure I've got a plain dead centre somewhere but I couldn't find it):
For the bed of the lathe, my current plan is to use a couple of bits of box section in parallel, with something welded across the ends to join them together. I'd leave a gap between the two bits of box section for bolts to go through to hold the headstock and tailstock down. I've got box section in several sizes: 25 mm, 30 mm and 40 mm sides, all with 2 mm wall thickness.
Some pondering needed now.
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