Woodbox 23

Lathe Arbor

Shopsmith - Accessory Catalog - MARK V Accesories - Lathe Accessories - Lathe Arbors

Blogged with Flock

Shopsmith - Universal Lathe Tool Rest

Boy howdy, I do want that.  I have the original tool rest on mine now, my old 50’s shopsmith that I use as my lathe.  I saw this on a forum post, and it’s awesome. 

With the baby coming, I’m not sure when I could afford it, but it looks like a great addition to my shop.

– badger

Blogged with Flock

There it is, in all it’s glory. You can click the link for a bigger picture if you want.

And yes, my shop is total mess right now.

At this point the “spring pole” lathe is almost built. THe reason for all the quotes around “spring pole” will be evident in a moment. At this point, we have uprights mounted on A frame supports, parrallel crossbeams, holding up a moveable head and tail stock with steel centers. Now we need a power source to rotate the object that will be held between the centers.

In olden times, and I do mean OLD, the power source was a springy pole, that would pull the rope wrapped around your workpiece back after you’d pushed down on the treadle to rotate it. This would create a reciprical or back and forth motion of the workpiece. You’d apply your tool on the down stroke, and ease off on the up stroke. This is the wood turning was done for hundreds of years.

Since I could not walk out to the woods and find a springy pole, and more to the point, I had no room in my garage for one, I decided to use a “bungie cord” instead. This would give me spring back enough to do the job, and could take up much less space, while still recreating the motion of the springy pole.

For my lathe I took a couple of lengths of 2×2 and drilled holes about 1 inch down from the top, on one side.  I did this for both side pieces.  They were about 8′ long, straight out of the hardware store.  I trimmed about 6 inches from the ends to get rid of bad wood.  I then cut a 4′ chunk, and drilled the ends to accept a 6″ piece of dowling on each end.  It stick out about 4″ after sinking it into the ends.  These dowels go through the holes in the tops of the side pieces.  No need to attach it any better, since the next step is to hook the end of the bungie (mine was purple, very festive) around the 2″ of dowling sticking out of the side piece, and stretching it over to the other side to hook it over the other dowling end.  This pulls the two side pieces up agaisnt the ends of the 2×2 middle piece, and it’s all good.

All I had to do was tie a rope around my bungie in the middle, and wrap it around the piece of wood pinched between centers, and voila a “spring pole”!

The last step was to create a treadle from some 1×2 scrap, a piece of leather for a hinge, and a piece of scrap ply wood to stand on.  The 1×2 should extend past the end of the crossbeams.  I notched the ends and made a sort of A shape out of the 1×2 pieces with two hinges attached to the plywood I stand on.  The crossbar of the “A” was placed so my foot had a comfortable place to rest.  It works quiet well, and is less work than I expected!

I’m still working on a design for a toolrest.  For now I just clamp a 2×2 scrap to the head and tail stock, but that doesn’t work very well.

– Badger

This post will cover the creation of the head and tail stock for the “spring pole” lathe project.

To make the stocks themselves, I just bolted together chunks of 2×4 to create a solid head stock. To make access to the piece of turning easier I cut the two side pieces with a 45 degree cut to give it a diagonal access to the area.

The length of the middle piece was determined by measuring above the crossbeams about 8″ (the height of what I thought might make a good turning area. (close to 16″ diameter turning area seemed more than enough.) The bottom part I picked a sizable tail to it, so I could cut a mortise into it for clamping to the cross bars, and left some below that to give it some strength (I will draw up plans later with exact measurments.) The size and depth of the notches in the uprights gives me a gap between the crossbars that a 2×4 fits into. The two short pieces (8″) screwed to the side of the middle, longer piece rest on the crossbars. when I fit a wedge into the mortice in the tail of the headstock, it locks the stock to the crossbars and is quite immobile.

To put the mortice hole in I used Fornster bits a bit wider than the width of the wedge I am using. I used a piece of Maple I had sitting around because I figured it would hold up better being pounded in and out all the time. I made the hole go above the bottom of the crossbars so that the wedge would lock against the underside, and not top out against the stock. I also angled the bottom of the mortise with a chisel to approximatly fit the angle of the wedge. My wedges ended up being different sizes but they both work quite well.

To make the centers I useda 1/2″ bolts I found at the hardware store. 1/2″ steel rod was expensive, but 1/2″ zinc plated steel bolts were about 70 cents for a 4″ bolt. The threading didn’t go all the way up the shaft, so a quick hacksaw job later, and I had cheap steel 1/2″ rod in the 2″ length I needed!! I rough ground one end of each center to a vague 45″ cone on my 6″ grinder, and then chucked the piece into my drill press, and held a metal file to the end to make a pointed shape. It turned out pretty nicely. I got this method of shaping the point from the Woodwrights shop tv program.

Drilling a 1/2″ hole in my head stock, and just pushed the center in. I can remove it later if I need to build a new headstock. Locking the head stock in place with a few taps of a wooden hammer to the wedge, I lined up the tailstock right up against the pointy end of the center in the headstock. I locked the ta