Hi Prometheus
Yes I think you made the right choice by going from scratch, rather
than try to work around a given, and going slow is best, think things
over before making the next step, good luck.
Have fun and take care
Leo Van Der Loo



On May 11, 6:38 am, Prometheus wrote:
On 10 May 2007 20:06:41 -0700, "

wrote:
Hi Prometheus

Sorry but I have to disagree with a bunch of things you are claiming
here.

That's fine, of course- What I was basing all of this on was the one I
am building, and the conclusions I reached (apparently in error!)
based on adapting the Gingery design to an existing wood lathe. I
really prefer to be corrected, actually- it's better to get things
straight than to walk around with a head full of nonsense, and it
seems like no matter how much stuff I do or study, it just becomes
more apparent how much there still is to figure out.

At this rate, I'm going to be lucky if I know how to tie my shoes in
50 years!



The first is that most wood lathes (at least, the ones I see) are a
gap-bed style. To fit and use a compound slide, you sort of need ways
that are made of a solid piece. A person could always mount ways on
the gap bed, but you'd lose some swing, and it'd be tough to align
properly (IMO.)

A lot of metal lathes are gap bet lathes also, and not just the small
ones, both large lathes we had in our shop where gab bed lathes, and
one had 26" swings and the other one more , don't remember the exact
swing, also the one I turn on now is a gab bed lathe.

The second is that a belt drive really isn't good for metal turning.
You want back gears if you're going to be turning slow, so that all
the torque isn't lost, and you need them if you expect to be able to
cut threads. Its another thing that could be worked around, but my
big concern with that was that I would have had to cut away parts of
the headstock, and what would be left may not have been enough to do
the job- a lot of products are engineered to be "just enough" and
putting extra stress on them like that will make them fail.

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.

Ah yes- I've seen those. But that seems like a far cry from the
little rubber band that turns the spindle on something like the Midi
lathe I was eyeing up!

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.

Unfortunately, I remember really well- the mill tooling we have at
work is HSS, and I haven't had the extra $$$ to pony up for new
carbide ones for my personal projects. (No, the boss will not
purchase them- they can pinch a penny until it screams up in the front
office. Kind of like any business, really- and since we're not
focused on milling, it's a make do or do without situation.)

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.

You'd never consider it? I sure did- I hadn't used the midi lathe in
over a year, I wanted a metal lathe, and didn't have enough cash to
buy one. That alone was reason enough to at least eye it up.

But I agree- selling the Midi to an aspiring wood turner was a better
move than trying to cobble something together. Building it from the
ground up has been working out pretty well, albeit slowly. I've just
been carefully making a part or two at a time, and using steel where
the plans call for aluminum. Should be a halfway decent piece of
equipment when it's done.