Building a New Lathe

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vtsteam:
Today it seemed time to try graduating the cross slide collar. I could probably do the engraving with my mill-drill in the other shed, but I decided to proceed to try it as if I didn't own one, and also don't own a working dividing head, rotary table, or even a 100 tooth gear for indexing......uh.....all of which I actually don't own. :wack: In other words, use the lathe to build itself, and a little careful thought about what is available.

So, to get a 100 division reference, I just drew up a circle in the good old free Google SketchUp 7, and made it out of 100 line segments. I connected the center and the circumference endpoints for one quadrant, then duplicated that 3 more times and rearranged them to make a fully divided circle.

Then I printed the circle out to just fit on a standard letter size sheet of paper (minus borders), which made it 7-1/2" diameter, and therefore also fitting a half inch inside my lathe's faceplate diameter of 8-1/2".

I also included a circle a little larger than my chuck diameter to cut out, so it would fit over the chuck while bolted to the faceplate.

vtsteam:
Then I cut the circles out with an X-acto knife

vtsteam:
And taped the ring to my faceplate. I found some hard piano wire, bent a loop in it, trapped that under one of the headstock bolts, and then bent it up to form a pointer over the paper divider ring.

I thought long and hard about how to fabricate a spindle lock. That seemed like another project in itself. But about that time I spied a scrap of softwood, and thought, hmmmmm, the lowly wedge...... probably mankind's first brake..... so why not try one?

A quick pass with a handsaw to shape it, inserting it between the faceplate and the front of the ways, a few light taps with a soft hammer and yes the spindle was immobilized. At least for the purposes of running a graver tool in the tool rest along a small brass collar, shaper style. There's little if any torque on the spindle for this operation so the pine brake should handle it.

I then turned an arbor to fit the brass collar in the 3-jaw. and left it in place to keep it perfectly on center. Here's the final set-up, for caveman style division engraving. Well not quite yet, I haven't ground a graving tool, or drilled and tapped the collar for a set screw, and it's now time for dinner. But tomorrow, we'll attack...... :zap:

kayzed1:
I like it a lot. :thumbup:

vtsteam:
Thanks Kayzed :beer:

After trying it out today on the new lathe, I like it a lot, too:

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