# Small Homemade Lathe



## dparker (Mar 18, 2008)

Hello All: Back in the 60's I saw a small modelmakers lathe casting kit in Popular Science and ordered it. I finally built it in the late 70's and used it some for making a plastic model of a proposed Test Lab for the company I worked for. My Daughter and my Son played on it some when they were young and now I am doing some modifying on it to be able to make some of the parts for the "Miser". Some of those parts are really little! I am making some "hand graver" cutters and will make a tool rest like a wood lathe to use them with.
I bought a LMS 3" 4 jaw chuck (shown in another post) for this but it is really just a little too big to open the jaws very far, so I will just stick with the drill chuck for now.





The lathe does have graduated dials and the next picture shows somewhat how I did that. I made a block to mount a cutter (as described by Guy Lautard in his book "Strike While The Iron Is Hot". The chuck was measured for diameter and a strip of paper was laid out and divided with the desired number of divisions and taped to the chuck and a pointer was taped to the headstock. The scriber was set to cut in a few thousands deep and every ten was cut a little longer. I think Guy describes this in one of the Bedside Reader books also. The cutter does not show up very good but I tried to have it out where it could be seen rather than hid behind the headstock from where I took the picture.




This must be "old stuff" to many on this site but hopefully it may help somebody do some dividing or make a graduated dial on a lathe.
don


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## Bogstandard (Mar 18, 2008)

Don,

There is nothing old hat in what you are showing, even us ones who know what it is about still like to see how other people do things.

Just keep pumping it out and amaze us all.

John


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## Powder keg (Mar 18, 2008)

Nice little lathe. Thanks for sharing)

Wes


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## gmac (Jul 24, 2009)

Before I grind up some 1/4" toolbits for specific applications (piston ring grooves in aluminum pistons, e-ring grooves in stainless steel valves etc) - should the cutting portion of the toolbit be reduced to the exactly the finished groove width OR slightly less than the finished groove width (light final cutting the sides to the finished dimension with second passes)?

Thanks again
Garry


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