You may well be right. One of the college kids in the group tried his
hand at a bungee powered pole lathe and learned a lot about how not to
do it.

This past summer when in Nova Scotia and PEI I made an effort to visit a
number of village museums. Lots of boats but no lathes. And the absolute
coolest homebrew machine I ever saw - for making the little wooden pegs
that used to keep lobster claws closed.

Next summer, Quebec most likely. I think I still remember enough French
to navigate a woodworking museum.

J.


J. Clarke wrote:

A thing to bear in mind is that most of what is now the US was only thinly
populated by Europeans in the 18th century. Historical societies in the
thirteen original colonies and the Spanish and French occupied areas
(Florida, Louisiana, California, etc) would likely be your best bets.
Might spend quite a lot of time making calls before you find lathes.

I suspect that the wooden spring-pole lathes were mostly shop-built and
idiosynchratic--if you can make it with hand tools and it works and looks
something like the illustrations in the various histories then it's
probably as "authentic" as anything you're going to find in a museum--but
I don't have a source for that. Might be worth looking at it from an
"experimental archaeology" viewpoint--make one that looks like a picture
in a book, using hand tools only, and see what goes wrong, fix it, and
after the fourth or fifth one you should have a pretty good understanding
of what compromises are forced on you by the materials and tools.

Thanks,

J.