----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Wilkins"
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.metalworking
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2008 5:41 AM
Subject: Economics of transmission


If you had a wood lathe you could make pulleys from glued wood bolted
between aluminum sheets. The larger driven pulley doesn't really need
a vee groove, for example my lathe has a vee pulley on the motor and a
flat one on the countershaft. http://www.lathes.co.uk/southbend/page4.html

If you had a wood lathe you wouldn't need to because you could polish
your disks on it. The kind to look for has a face plate mount on the
left end of the spindle for turning large bowls.

A rotary sander or buffer will turn the work piece all by itself, you
don't need to drive it separately, just allow it to rotate. You
control the speed by the angle of contact.

Do I understand you right? You are sanding/polishing as you driving the
object in one operation? I wonder if that would clean up the edges, too. I
got a 3-jaw chuck which I could get to spin on something while keeping the
work in contact with a stationary disk sander. Now that would be brilliant!

Otherwise I can see how polishing could be done at 700 rpm but I was not
sure about ruing up the edges - I thought that would have to be done
somewhere around 60 rpm.


When I ground the flat for the blade on the motorcycle tire for my
sawmill I found that it made a good rotary table. It already has an
axle with good bearings and a brake disk you could extend with
plywood, the spinning tread isn't particularly dangerous although the
spokes can be, and it has enough inertia that is doesn't speed up too
quickly if the grinder runs parallel to the rim. The bike had been in
a crash that bent the forks but didn't damage the wheel very much.


Right. You mentioned that before and I had some trouble getting my mind
around it :-) I am still keeping that option open.
I am looking at some woodlathes. The Canadian Tire has one for $167, but all
the reviews suggest it is a POS.

However all of that is on hold as an opportunity has presented itself today
to look at a real lathe (see my other today's post - what to look for before
parting with cash!)

Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC