On Nov 2, 9:31�am, Joe Corona wrote:
I just got a 7x12 mini lathe,I want to practice on cheap plastic
meterial before I become proficient enough to work on metal.Do you
think
plastic is a good material to learn basics of turning and if that is
the case what type of plastic do you recomend, and some suppliers. I
tried the internet,but the choices are limitless and many suppliers
deal with
other companies

Do yourself a favor, and go to a local metal supply source (or on-line
source like Metal Express) and buy some steel round stock of known
composition. The supplier can recommend some inexpensive grade that
machines well, and you will be happy and much more at home with your
new lathe when you finish turning $20 worth of stock into chips. On
the other hand, an evening with the sorts of hard and tough alloys
that show up in scrap yards can be frustrating, uneducational, and
perhaps downright dangerous. Ruining a couple of pieces of your
tooling can cost far more than you can save by being "frugal."