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A Hand Steady Rest for the New Lathe

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vtsteam:
Had to try it out, even though I haven't even made up proper gravers -- I took an old triangular file, ground the teeth off and sharpened the end on the Antiquorn. Then heated the tip up to cherry red, plunged it in a cup of water, heated again to temper color and plunged again.

I didn't have any "good" steel in the tiny shop, but did have a piece of 3/4" hot rolled rod, and so I put that in an MT2 collet after pulling off the 4-jaw chuck. What the heck, if it cut this stuff at all I'd be happy.

I didn't bother taking off the backplate for this test. Just switched on the new lathe and started cutting. I broke the tip off my new tool a couple times. It turned out the slot was too short in the steady's base and I couldn't get close enough to close the gap tighter, so I stopped the lathe, ran down to the shed where the mill is, and gave the slot in the base another 3/8" of travel.

Back at the lathe that did the trick, and I began cutting again without the problems. And on poor turning steel, too. It took a little practice, before I "got it", but then I started to be able cut where and how I wanted!   :ddb:

I can see some things I will probably refine in both tooling and practice. But Very happy with the new capability on the home built lathe!

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