I agree entirely. As for the belt, look in a modern (non CNC) lathe. No
leather belts anymore. Now they are reinforced rubber but still a belt (or
three).

wrote in message
ups.com...

Only a few years back really, and all lathes where belt driven, ever
seen those pictures with banks of lathes and long leather belts coming
down from big wooden pulleys on one shaft up high, that drove all
those machines.

Well the old lathe I learned machining on was a flat belt driven one,
it had all the auto feed and cross feed for turning threads etc., but
you did have to manually change gears, those lathes had very often
double reduction gears on the headstock so you could turn large work
pieces very slowly, remember this was before carbide tool bids, speeds
had to be even lower than today, as HSS was the best there was.

However I would not choose a shopsmith to make metal turning lathe out
of, there are much better wood lathes to use for that, I don't think I
ever even would consider doing this, but that's another story.

Have fun and take care
Leo Van Der Loo