My Atlas 10" Metal Lathe is a Wood Lathe too?!

[Atlas2start]

Going through all the stuff for my lathe tonight, sorting things out, and cleaning things up. I found this tooling, and at first I didn't even think it was part of my lathe. Turns out that one of the previous owners had almost all the attachments for wood turning on a 10" lathe.

 

[Nutfarmer]

Learn something new everyday . This is a new one on me. But why not. If it can be spun fast enough it would work just fine.

 

[SLK001]

Even South Bend sold attachments like that to turn wood on their lathes.

 

[Atlas2start]

The guy that I purchased my lathe from was using it to turn wood, but he thought it did a poor job, so he purchased a wood lathe. I just didn't realize that Atlas made wood turning attachments for this lathe.

 

[wa5cab]

Atlas also made wood-turning lathes in the 30's and 40's, some of which Sears sold.

 

[Atlas2start]

It is surprising how much wood shop stuff Atlas made. I just didn't know that they made wood shop accessories for the metal lathes.

 

[rwm]

I made a rest for my QCTP to support wood turning chisels. Is this bad?
Robert

 

[wa5cab]

Nope. But there is one difference between wood turning and metal turning that you should remember. Don't leave the shavings on the machine whenever you use it for wood turning. Wood shavings, unlike metal shavings, will absorb moisture from the atmosphere, and more when the relative humidity is high. So if you mostly use the machine on weekends for example, clean the shavings off of the bed and carriage Sunday night instead of the following Saturday morning.

 

[SLK001]

Better yet, rig up a shop vac to remove the wood chips as they are made. Not only do chips cause rusting on your machine, they have a tendency to get everywhere if not adequately controlled.

 

[matthewsx]

And they made one that went the other way too.

Craftsman Conversion of wood lathe to Metal Lathe Kit

History and development of the Craftsman, Dunlap, Companion, Metalcraft, Metalmaster, AA109, 109, Simpson and Courlan and manufactured by the American

www.lathes.co.uk

There were a lot of multi use contraptions back in the day....

John