Wood lathe build

benmychree

John York
H-M Supporter Gold Member
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Jun 7, 2013
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I am building a wood lathe, 12" swing and about 5 ft center to center; I made patterns for the head and tailstocks and had the cast in iron, I am presently laying them out for machining, as the pictures will show. I had made the headstock some time back to use on an Oliver patternmaker's lathe, hence many of the parts are already made for the headstock, My original design for the headstock was faulty, as the lack of the tie bar on top of the original headstock was not rigid enough, which made the bearings run rough and noisy. I added the tie bar to the existing pattern, and made a new pattern for the tailstock. The step cone pulleys came off a small hand screw machine made by the Frieden Calculator Co. of SF Cal. during WW-2, and are cast iron. The two aluminum pulleys provide for two speed ranges so that large faceplate work could be done. The bed will be about 2X8 oak with cold rolled flat screwed on the top; legs will likely be oak also.

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this looks like a great project. Looking forward to seeing your progress.
 
Impressive work John, having anything cast in iron is not easy especially one off stuff, i'm intrigued, first why and how are you planning to make the bed out of wood and flat steel, most of DIY lathes i've seen use C chanel or I beem for the bed.
 
Here you are! Progress of the day; I set the head and tailstocks up on my #2 B&S mill, first I set up the castings on three planer jacks and leveled them with my surface gage to the layout lines, then I inserted tight fitting parallels in the tee slot, and set the vertical layout lines on the ends to the edge of the parallels, then clamped the castings to the table, and rechecked the leveling and centerlines; I then milled a cleanup cut on the backside of the head and tailstocks to be used as a reference surface for milling the bottoms of the castings. I clamped each casting to the table at the extreme back edge, 1/8" overhanging the table and leveled the castings to their centerlines, clamped them to the table and milled the key portion with a carbide face mill, then milled the seating part that will sit on the lathe ways with a HSS shell mill. First I milled all the surfaces, leaving about 1/32" stock, then went back and finished each surface to the layout lines and the key width with a mike.
Impressive work John, having anything cast in iron is not easy especially one off stuff, i'm intrigued, first why and how are you planning to make the bed out of wood and flat steel, most of DIY lathes i've seen use C chanel or I beem for the bed.
I'm using wood for the bed because I already have it!

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Here is the next installment, consisting of facing off the ends of the bearing housings, preparatory to boring the holes for the spindle bearings:
001 setup to drill & ream index plunger bore
002 finding center lines for plunger bore
003finfing bore center
004 mill off face of boss for plunger hole
005 drill hole
006 ream hole
007 mill end of spindle housing
008 mill w/ 6" shell mill
010 face inner face of spindle housing with sweep tool in boring bar
011 ditto
014 ditto far end
015 chips
016 more chips!
017 centering spindle to set up parallels with dial indicator
018 setting spindle center to setup parallels vertically using wiggler and height gage
019 setting height for spindle bore from base line of parallels.
I note that there may be some confusion as to the numbering of pictures posted due to some pics having the same numbers from my previous posts.

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I like your use of the wiggler, height gage, and other choices of tooling for quickly setting up work. I am horribly slow at many setups and so I am paying close attention... That looks like nice iron that cuts with real chips. What alloy is it, John?
 
I think it is class 30 iron; I do not know what the source of iron is, but assume it is scrap; we could ask Jake, since he has been there. I have to use the methods for setting height and location as I have done, since my machines have no DRO or verniers, so I use the height gage and whatever, including a planer gage and size blocks and step gages, all "old school" methods, I do have a Travadial on my 19" lathe, 'tho.
 
Here is the next chapter: boring the headstock for the bearings. I am using angular contact bearings in this project, and fit them so that they can be tapped in, with very slight clearance. I checked my centering where the casting fits snugly between the parallels, to closer than .001", and also, then reset the center height with the height gage and wiggler; I then bored the holes, turning the casting around to reach each end in turn. I could have line bored both holes in one setting, but precision measurement is problematic with the boring bar in place.wood lathe 4 001.JPGwood lathe 4 002.JPGwood lathe 4 003.JPG and quite time consuming, and I feel that concentricity between the ends is likely to be quite close.
 
This chapter is about line boring the tailstock; I borrowed the two cast iron box parallels from my old shop ( I made them many years ago), and set them up on the mill table accurately, set the tailstock between them snugly, then indicated to set the spindle centered between the parallels, then set the center height with the wiggler and height gage and clamped the tailstock in place, I then made a boring bar of 13/16 drill rod that was on the shelf, and made a plug with bronze bushing to fit the headstock bore and clamped its flange to the headstock and clamped the headstock down, and started boring, I got one rough cut all the way through; tomorrow is another day! Also there are pics at the beginning of milling the ends of the barrel off.

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