Homemade Lathe

[clemsonguy1125]

Heres the start of my spring pole lathe. This is a model of an ancient lathe, they are powered by a foot pedel and a flexible tree or in my case a bungee cord. Now I have the bed and part of the base complete. I still need to add the feet, bungee, and the chuck system.
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[Gun Freak]

Cool, I bet you used your jiggy for it
Good start, I think you need some stabilizing legs for it, and the chuck is gonna be the really hard part

[clemsonguy1125]

Well its sturdy now so I think 2 3 feet long feet will be enough, I can add stabilizing legs if needed, and yes I used the jig saw as much as possible, its not really a chuck but Ill do something like this guy did, and thanks

[jor2daje]

Are you going to use it for wood or pvc? for wood I would recommend a faceplate, and a spur center, but with pvc you will want to make a chuck.

Its looking pretty nice so far.

[clemsonguy1125]

Thanks, its mostly for turning small wooden pieces, chess pieces small goblets, maybe a few furniture legs, its mostly just to mess around with, what do you mean by spur center?

[jor2daje]

some thing like this, i think its also called a drive center



that will work well for thing that dont need to be hollowed out because you support the piece with the tailstock.

For hollowing things out like goblets, and small bowls, youll want the face plate with a waste block screwed too it, then you can hot glue your work to that. I use hot glue for holding all my pieces on and it works great, the block splits before the glue separates.

[clemsonguy1125]

Ok thanks, I never knew hot glue was that stong, I plan to whittle down all my work pieces to rough cylinders before I start to shape them too

[Gun Freak]

Lol hot glue is a beast! Mostly everything on my M16 is held on by hot glue lololol

[clemsonguy1125]

Only problem with that is in the 107 degree heat the gun will start to fall apart, I can see you sprinting across the yard firing when the gun just collapses, lol, why not epoxy it

[jor2daje]

I wouldnt bother whittling things down, Ive never used a spring pole lathe, but on my shopsmith, for things under a couple of inches or so its far easier to just rough everything out on the lathe. Ofcourse this is with an electric motor not a bungee cord and a pedal.

I get the feeling this project will get you hooked on turning, but pretty soon youll be wanting for something with a proper motor and tool rest. I would recommend a shopsmith, because it can be used as 5 other tools, many that are very useful for spudding. They can be had very cheap on craigslist if your willing to do a little work to fix it up.

[clemsonguy1125]

Well I have to deal with a reciprocating motion, Ill try it both ways and see which is quickest, in old times they used a draw knife. I may end up getting a shopsmith but what kind of work did you have to do to fix yours up, just clean it up or motor work.

[jor2daje]

Pretty much just clean it up, depending on where you live rusty ways are normally the biggest problem, I'm pretty lucky living in California. I was able to use mine within a few hours but it took about a week of use for everything to move like I wanted it to.

[clemsonguy1125]

I added the spring, pole, feet, and pedal, its not 7 feet tall and a little over four feet wide, all that left is to add the "chuck system", its consists of a pieces of wood cut out to fit in the gap with to nail sticking through it to hold the wood
http://a.imageshack.us/img839/382/sprin ... date00.jpg
http://a.imageshack.us/img814/382/sprin ... date00.jpg
http://a.imageshack.us/img185/382/sprin ... date00.jpg
http://a.imageshack.us/img804/382/sprin ... date00.jpg
http://a.imageshack.us/img294/382/sprin ... date00.jpg
http://a.imageshack.us/img827/382/sprin ... date00.jpg
Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated, Im not really sure what im doing, Im building this from a few pictures and web pages Ive found.

[clemsonguy1125]

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