How to Build small Home Made Lathe

[oskar]

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

 

[RandyM]

OK, so you are building a wood turning lathe?

 

[NavyShooter]

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

 

[benmychree]

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.

 

[oskar]

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

Thank you both

 

[Terrywerm]

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.

 

[oskar]

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

 

[oskar]

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

 

[ericc]

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.

 

[benmychree]

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.