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A Hand Steady Rest for the New Lathe

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vtsteam:
A couple of recent mill projects have come together to facilitate this new one. The first was my DIY bluetooth DRO this is the first actual use it has been put to. The second was my Antiquorn junkyard mill sharpener, which supplied the mills that did the cutting, basically resurrecting them from the blunt.

The project is a hand steady rest for my new lathe. I'll be making interchangeable Tee rests to fit it for both wood turning, and, I hope, metal, as well.

Below are most of the pieces that the mill and lathe churned out from mostly hot rolled tough-to-machine steel. The design is largely based on one published by Frank Mclean, who used to write for Home Shop Machinist back in the nineties.

The Tee rest is composed of an upright post with a 45 degree chamfer that bolts onto a piece of angle iron. The bolt is mainly for positioning the angle iron parallel to the lathe ways vertically, as the Tee rest is later brazed to the post.

One interesting machining point is the upright socket, with a shoulder and through bore turned off-center in the 4-jaw chuck. The reason for the eccentricity was to allow more substance on one side of the part to house the set screw.

vtsteam:
Here are the pieces placed together. There is still more to be done, but this gives the general idea.

efrench:
A piece of hardened drill rod or use hard facing welding rod on the top edge will help keep it ding free :)

vtsteam:
I'm sure that's true efrench, but this particular Tee will see very occasional use making wooden patterns.  :beer:

The Tee I'm more interested in and will make shortly will be for metal graving. But I probably won't harden that either. We'll see how it holds up. I have Kasenit, in case it's needed.

efrench:
Are tool posts for graving just a flat plate or platform?

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