Thank you meldonmech and PekkaNF.
Okay, I'll start a thread detailing some of the lathe construction and the accessories and how I made things, since you guys are interested. Guess I'll do it in the Projects section.
Thanks for all the encouragement on this site. I was once told on another site that Gingery lathes weren't good for anything other than teaching the basics. For a moment I felt embarrassed. But that was just wrong. I disagree about both the lack of usefulness of the lathe and the playing down of the "basics."
The basics are the building blocks on which you can do anything. You can turn a Gingery lathe into anything you want it to be, because you learned how to do that. Build a machine form nothing. If you are dissatisfied with any part of it, you can use it to make that part of the machine better, stronger, heavier, more precise, whatever it is you want. You know how to cast, file, scrape, lay out, punch, drill, bore, turn, mill, grind, harden, temper, thread, and make tooling, as well as knowing one more thing. That you can do anything you want with almost nothing. From scrap and a desire to do what you envision.
It isn't just a lathe you get out of it. It's your lathe, and it will do anything you want it to do, because you can make it anything you want it to be.
