Irresspective of the size of your lathe. When you turn outboard, EVERYTHING
is in its weakest position. As long at the piece is balanced, you are okay.
Rough turning is OUT.

Forget turning something heavy outboard, unless you life insurance is fully
paid, or you really like pain.

I have a JET 1442, which allows the same outboard turning. On my JET, all I
do is slide the headstock down far enough to allow me to move the banjo to
the back side of the head stock and I am in pretty good shape. I also have
an extension left over from an old Harbor Freight lathe that allows me to
get around to the the face of the piece.

All that being said, remember, you are turning OUTBOARD for a reason - i.e.,
the piece is too large in diameter to turn between centers. That mean you
"rim speed" is going to be rather high, so keep you lathe set to one of the
lowest speed settings. Even then, that rim speed, depending on the size of
the piece (my largest, so far, has been about 24 inches) can be a lot faster
than you turn between centers.

Deb



Dave Balderstone wrote:

In article , Larry Blanchard
wrote:

On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 10:22:29 -0600, Dave Balderstone wrote:

I'm about to take delivery of a General International 25-200M1 lathe.
This will be my first lathe that allows outboard turning.

I'm hoping for some recommendations for a tool test when I do the
outboard stuff. What do all y'all use? Commercial, or did you build it?

Assuming you meant "tool rest" and not "tool test":

Indeed.

I've got that lathe. It comes with a tool rest extension that works
reasonably well for me.

We'll see if it's included with mine... I don't see it listed on
General's site.

One suggestion. The ways extension for outboard turning only fits on one
end of the bed - the headstock end. I turned the bed around (it's
symmetrical) so the extension is on the tailstock end. That way I don't
have to turn the head 180 degrees, I just slide it down. When I turned
it the cord was always getting hung up somewhere.

Nice tip, thanks! I am getting the bed extension so have to move stuff
around in the shop. I'll take that trick into account as I plan...

While I haven't done it yet, I've also considered making a block of wood
to fit between the bed and the extension to move the extension out
further.

What will that gain?

Enjoy the lathe - everyone I know that has one, including myself, thinks
it's the greatest. They initially had a problem with the speed control
but that appears to have been solved a while back.

That's great to hear. My little Delta Miidi has done me well, but I had
to turn down a really interesting commission simply because I can't
spin a piece of wood big enough. It would have paid for 1/3 of the
General.