Well…. Do not have a lathe… but got a Starrett 98-6 level…. In preparation for getting one…
I have been doing primitive model building from childhood, as in age 10 or 11. I didn't get a lathe of my own until I had enlisted and went to sea in '68. My first machine was a UniMat DB-200. Small so I could stash it in the elect. shop on the ship. Admitedly, I did have access to a full size machine, although I wasn't allowed to actually run it. Just touch it as long as I wiped my fingerprints off.
In any case, as a teenager, I did have access to basic "home owner" tooling. I took my Pop's 3/8 (I think) drill and chucked it up in a vise. A true vise, although low end (very low end) It was of cast iron like a machinist's vise. Taping the trigger down and plugged into a switched outlet. For tooling, I used mostly (rusty, broken) files and a couple of homemade gouges. Not much of even a wannabe lathe, but it was in the days when I was making switches with a piece of hack saw blade and a couple of machine screws. I thought it was quite a machine. FWIW, I only tried line voltage switching the one time. The rest were low voltage. . .
As time passed, a neighbor did allow me to touch his machine. I don't know what it actually was, but in the '60s and looking back was probably the Sears version of the 618 Atlas. Most times, I was allowed to do basic setups and then he would make the cut. It was here I learned about 4 jaw chucks and how to center them. Then, I got a driver's license and started chasing girls and other "grown man" doings and machining fell
way down the priority list. Then I turned 15 and we moved south from Virginia to Alabama, when I essentially had to start all over in everything.
I apologize for the personal history lesson, but it does apply to what I am trying to convey. Being a beginning machinist (a novice) is as much a state of mind as it is having the proper machines. I wasn't trying to be a novice machinist, I wanted to make parts for my models. Parts that I could have bought if there had been any loose money. But times were slim at the time and I could only make them or do without. Doing without wasn't an option, this was my
hobby obsession. And I did make a few things to help out with the house, seldom noticed.
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