# How to Build small Home Made Lathe



## oskar (Feb 21, 2018)

Sorry folks if I’m at the wrong place but I would like to build a small lathe just to get the experience and learn the use of it. I never touched a lathe and know nothing about it however I have built a few CNC routers (pictures shows my last cnc) which after working on them just for the fun I sell them and then I start the next one.

Ideally I would build a lathe out of plywood to get the experience and latter make another one out of aluminum to shape wood pieces. Eventually perhaps I would like to make a CNC Lathe.

Searching this forum I didn’t find any builds which you can follow and see the parts. Can someone point me to such a thread(s)?

Thanks


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## RandyM (Feb 21, 2018)

OK, so you are building a wood turning lathe?


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## NavyShooter (Feb 21, 2018)

There was a guy on Youtube that did something like what I think you're interested in doing.






His is a bit of a 'hack' job build, but worth a look perhaps.

There's part 1.

NS


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## benmychree (Feb 21, 2018)

I am in the process of building a wood lathe now, because my Oliver 12 " patternmaker's is not long enough for what I want to do with it; I am having iron castings made for the head and tailstocks, the ways will be oak with cold rolled flat stock screwed down on top, and the legs likely will be oak wood as well.  when I get the castings, I will take a lot of pics and post them.


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## oskar (Feb 21, 2018)

Yes, I plan to build a wood turning lathe and the video is very helpful

Thank you both


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## Terrywerm (Feb 21, 2018)

If you are really ambitious and are not afraid to get into some home foundry work, you might enjoy some success (and learns tons of stuff) by searching out a book by Dave Gingery that goes into building a small metal lathe from scratch. You could also modify it to make a wood lathe instead, but the process would be the same.

Here is a link to where you can purchase a copy:  http://gingerybookstore.com/MetalLathe.html

This would be a rather involved undertaking, but you would learn much along the way and would be able to take great pride in such a project.


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## oskar (Feb 21, 2018)

Sorry benmychree, I forgot about your post. I will be very interested to see the pictures of your build


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## oskar (Feb 21, 2018)

Terry the book looks pretty good and I will try to get it
Thanks


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## ericc (Feb 21, 2018)

Hi.  I thought about building my own lathe.  Someone on the Internet told me to buy a beat up old lathe and fix it instead.  This should be a lot quicker.  So far, I've been into it for a few years.  Progress is slow, but probably would have been slower if I had started on my own.  The Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman once said that students spend too much time reading papers trying to figure them out.  Instead, they should just look at the results and simply calculate them without getting confused by what's in the middle.  But, maybe that is like a Silicon Valley mom exhorting her kids to drop out and be like Bill Gates.


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## benmychree (Feb 21, 2018)

oskar said:


> Sorry benmychree, I forgot about your post. I will be very interested to see the pictures of your build


My patterns are at the foundry now, I expect to see the castings soon and will get started before long; the headstock is ball bearing equipped, and has a tie bar over the top of the cone pulley to give it more stiffness in adjusting the angular contact bearings; the pulleys are cast iron and were made originally for a Paragon hand screw machine that was made during WW 2 by the Frieden Calculator Co. of San Francisco. The back end of the spindle is threaded for faceplate work, there will be a countershaft behind the spindle and a two step pulley on it and the motor for a high and low speed range, those parts are already made; I made a headstock without the tie bar (like an old Hendy lathe) but there was the bearing adjustment problem, so I modified the pattern for this job.  I had made the headstock for a Oliver patternmaker's lathe that was missing the headstock, I later found a headstock on e bay for it.  The tailstock will be non cross sliding.  I have not decided if I am going to make the tool rest assembly, I may just use Delta items.


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## benmychree (Feb 21, 2018)

ericc said:


> Hi.  I thought about building my own lathe.  Someone on the Internet told me to buy a beat up old lathe and fix it instead.  This should be a lot quicker.  So far, I've been into it for a few years.  Progress is slow, but probably would have been slower if I had started on my own.  The Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman once said that students spend too much time reading papers trying to figure them out.  Instead, they should just look at the results and simply calculate them without getting confused by what's in the middle.  But, maybe that is like a Silicon Valley mom exhorting her kids to drop out and be like Bill Gates.


I'd think the worst worn out lathe you could find would be better than the project on the video.


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## neshkoro (Feb 23, 2018)

benmychree said:


> oskar said:
> 
> 
> > Sorry benmychree, I forgot about your post. I will be very interested to see the pictures of your build
> ...



A lathe is the most basic tool to start to build any other tool. How will you make the spindle or any other of the shafts in the lathe?
How will you machine the pulleys? Not saying it is impossible, just very curious. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## agfrvf (Feb 23, 2018)

See HLaps1990 on youtube. He has a very detailed build series.


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## Dave Paine (Feb 23, 2018)

A fellow Canadian, Matthias Wandel likes to build machines using wood.    He has a video on building his lathe.

Matthias Wandel wood lathe build video

A US fellow, Jeremy Fielding also like to build machines using wood.   His video on building his lathe.

Jeremy Fielding wood lathe build video

As others have mentioned, starting with a crappy wood lathe like the Craftsman monotube may be faster.   There is a lot which you can do to improve a monotube lathe.


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## markba633csi (Feb 23, 2018)

You might look at the "Shopsmith" multi-purpose woodworking machine to get some ideas.  
They also come up for sale quite often at very affordable prices
Mark


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## magicniner (Feb 23, 2018)

Make yourself a Pole Lathe, it's the only wood construction lathe that's worth building.


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## benmychree (Feb 23, 2018)

neshkoro said:


> A lathe is the most basic tool to start to build any other tool. How will you make the spindle or any other of the shafts in the lathe?
> How will you machine the pulleys? Not saying it is impossible, just very curious.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


The spindle is already made, as well as all the other bits and pieces of the headstock, except the main casting, which is at the foundry, which as I previously said is a modified version of the one that I originally made, which was too flexible to keep the bearings in correct adjustment.  To answer specific questions, the spindle  looks like a spindle should look, it is steel, is drilled and bored hollow and is threaded on both ends for chucks and faceplates (left and right handed threads) and also threaded for the bearing adjustment collar, the pair of pulleys were already machined and are cast iron, they came with a small turret lathe (hand screw machine) that I had and used a Reeves drive on instead, so I had the left over. the other pulleys for the motor and countershaft (with two steps, I made of aluminum plate.  If you look at my list of equipment, you will see that I do not lack for much of anything to accomplish the task, and I am still able to use the equipment at my business that I sold when I retired about seven years ago.


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## magicniner (Feb 23, 2018)

benmychree said:


> the headstock is ball bearing equipped



Not taper rollers?


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## benmychree (Feb 23, 2018)

magicniner said:


> Not taper rollers?


No not tapered rollers, but angular contact ball bearings.


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## oskar (Feb 23, 2018)

I got The Metal Lathe book by Gingery but I’m afraid I’m not equipped for castings neither working on steel. The book gave me a good insight about lathes and terminology and I’m happy I got it.

I’m working on the design of my new small lathe and I plan to make a model out of MDF on what I will build out of aluminum. After the model is complete then I will cut the aluminum pieces according to the MDF model. That’s the plan but I have some questions:

I discover in my storage that I have a Taig 200-60 ER16 spindle along with a Serline VS motor (90VDC, 1.85A) including the pulleys, brackets and a set of ER16 collets from 1/32” to 3/8”. I plan to use this spindle and propably buy a Face Plate to get going at first. I don’t know how the Face Plate will mount into the spindle and I wonder if anyone here knows about it.

I think I will build a cnc lathe and I wonder what size slide rails / ballscrews are normally used in small lathes. On the cnc router I built shown in my first post the slide rails and ball screws are 16mm diameter. Is that too big? I can get the slide rails in 12mm diameter but the smallest diameter for the screws is 16mm.


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## Bi11Hudson (Feb 25, 2018)

I started out with my Pop's electric drill clamped up in a vise. That was 55-60 years back. A few years ago, I acquired Gingery's books. As much to learn the finer points of machining from scratch as anything. I ended up acquiring a Grizzly 1550 machine for serious metal work, then upgraded to a Craftsman 12x36 when I tackled a project too large for the Griz.

Sorry for the ancient history lesson, but it sort of bears on my comments following. We won't go into the UniMat (DB-200) I bought in '69 or so. The relevant subject is Pop's electric drill. It was used for metal, plastic and wood projects relating to my model building. What I wanted to pass along was a link to a "Maker" project that a fellow had posted. It may not be the exact end use you're looking for but will get you up and running enough to make small projects in wood, so you have at least a little experience while you build a metal version.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Hom...Press/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email

It may take some finagling to get into the article, but well worth the effort if you want to build one. Only a couple of metal parts, the rest wood. What you were actually looking for, if I'm not mistaken.

Good luck with the project;
Bill Hudson​


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