3 days 16 hours and 31 minutes showing on the guilt-o-meter and here is my introductory post.
I'm 62, retired (8 years) and a woodworking hobbyist for 35+ years. I trained as an organic chemist but spent most of my working life as a technical consultant (computer systems) working all over the planet. At the end it was porting and migration to the then new 64 bit systems.
When our current home was built 25 years ago I decided, having had many shops that didn't do what was intended - to have one that did. Rather than a house with attached shop, this is more like a shop with attached house, the house being fitted from the shop. The shop is 750 sq ft, heated because it gets to -40 here, and air conditioned because it get to +40(C) here. Because the house is rather long (107 feet), the shop has its own loo (really - that was the reason).
After retirement I had a narrowboat built and we spent half of each of the next 5 years living on the canals of England and Wales ( love the border counties ) and the rest of the time here in Canada. Sadly we sold the boat in 2008 and returned full time to Canada to tend to infirm parents. We hope to return one day.
One day (I swear it's true) my wife suggested I needed a metal lathe and one was duly ordered (must have taken several nsec). I have just 6 feet of bench space devoted to metalwork (and one rolling tool cabinet). I fear that the loo may have to be sacrificed for more metal shop space. Initially I wanted to fabricate and maintain bits to do with woodworking. My first part was a top bushing for a balloon sander.
Since then I have been reading and attempting to get the lathe (B2227L see http://busybeetools.ca/cgi-bin/picture10?NTITEM=B2227L ) tuned up and as safe as possible to use for an amateur like myself. I've purchased some tooling and have prowled a local scrapyard as well as ordering some metal online and will soon be ready to attempt some further mods to the lathe and accessories for it. Engines will have to wait a bit as I want to have at least a lathe milling attachment before I begin. Building some of these engines looks to me to be a great way to develop machining skills.
I'd like to hear from other B2227L users with respect to mods they have undertaken. This lathe seems to be unique to Canada but there are many Canucks here and I know some of you have this lathe. Many mods and shop built tooling are common to all lathes and it was a search for these that brought me here.
The work and obvious talent on display in this forum is what kept me coming back. If the forum had a better search facility it would be perfect, but there is an upside to it as I have found all sorts of things while not finding what I was looking for
. At least one moderator will now respond that the search facility was designed that way.
Ken
I'm 62, retired (8 years) and a woodworking hobbyist for 35+ years. I trained as an organic chemist but spent most of my working life as a technical consultant (computer systems) working all over the planet. At the end it was porting and migration to the then new 64 bit systems.
When our current home was built 25 years ago I decided, having had many shops that didn't do what was intended - to have one that did. Rather than a house with attached shop, this is more like a shop with attached house, the house being fitted from the shop. The shop is 750 sq ft, heated because it gets to -40 here, and air conditioned because it get to +40(C) here. Because the house is rather long (107 feet), the shop has its own loo (really - that was the reason).
After retirement I had a narrowboat built and we spent half of each of the next 5 years living on the canals of England and Wales ( love the border counties ) and the rest of the time here in Canada. Sadly we sold the boat in 2008 and returned full time to Canada to tend to infirm parents. We hope to return one day.
One day (I swear it's true) my wife suggested I needed a metal lathe and one was duly ordered (must have taken several nsec). I have just 6 feet of bench space devoted to metalwork (and one rolling tool cabinet). I fear that the loo may have to be sacrificed for more metal shop space. Initially I wanted to fabricate and maintain bits to do with woodworking. My first part was a top bushing for a balloon sander.
Since then I have been reading and attempting to get the lathe (B2227L see http://busybeetools.ca/cgi-bin/picture10?NTITEM=B2227L ) tuned up and as safe as possible to use for an amateur like myself. I've purchased some tooling and have prowled a local scrapyard as well as ordering some metal online and will soon be ready to attempt some further mods to the lathe and accessories for it. Engines will have to wait a bit as I want to have at least a lathe milling attachment before I begin. Building some of these engines looks to me to be a great way to develop machining skills.
I'd like to hear from other B2227L users with respect to mods they have undertaken. This lathe seems to be unique to Canada but there are many Canucks here and I know some of you have this lathe. Many mods and shop built tooling are common to all lathes and it was a search for these that brought me here.
The work and obvious talent on display in this forum is what kept me coming back. If the forum had a better search facility it would be perfect, but there is an upside to it as I have found all sorts of things while not finding what I was looking for
. At least one moderator will now respond that the search facility was designed that way.Ken
