Stuart engineering Lathe

[ironman]

Jason, that is some super fine work. Beautiful.

ironman (Ray)

 

[coopertje]

Thanks for checking in Nick and Ray!

I have the oilers (fake ones) ready. Since I did not have a nice design available I was so free to copy the oilers Mario Lucchini made on his extraordinary lathe build! If you did not see his lathe you should go and check it out (its in A work in progress), its a true beauty!

I started with the base of the oiler, made from 5mm hex brass. This is just before parting it off.

After parting off I swapped it in the chuck and made a countersink of 4mm diameter, 1mm deep. In here I will glue a piece of transparent tube

When the 2 bases where ready I made the top cover. Below the tools used for this

Cover just before parting off

Again swapped it in the chuck and made a small radius with a file

I tried to cut straight parts of the tube I had laying around. Since its not so flexible and took the round shape during the years waiting to be used it was impossible to get a straight tube. And straight it should be because one side is glued on the base and on the other end the top cover will be glued. If the tube is not straight the oiler will also not be straight....... scratch.gif .... :idea:

I drilled a hole of 4mm (tube diameter) in a piece of scrap alu and used that as a cutting mold. Still did not work due to the bend in the tube...... then I put a drill inside the tube to keep the tube straight and made a cut around the drill......Success.... straight pieces of tube!

Below the oilers mounted on the lathe

Up to the wooden base plate and chuck key

Cu regards Jeroen

 

[nfk]

I love those little details, nice work!

 

[coopertje]

Thanks Noberto! By the way, the change that I will visit BA end of march is almost zero. Planning changed....as usual... but I will be there for sure in future.

I found some nice M3 bolds with the correct hex cap. Just needed to remove the upper part, they were intended for some electronic device at work and I was the happy guy to save them from the trash bin

They look much better then internal hex screws, however I see that I did a lousy job in de-burring the handwheels :-[ )

Further I drilled the holes in the headstock base and the tailstock foot. With these holes the lathe will be mounted on the wooden base plate

I am planning to make some little tools for the lathe, for example chuck key, key for the toolpost bold and maybe some other stuff. I decided to make a small cabinet to be placed beside the lathe. Started to cut 4 pieces of brass to length, and drill and tap M3 in the bottom so I can screw the cabinet to the wooden base plate too.

Cut the side and black plate out of a 1mm thick brass sheet and silver soldered the side stands to the side plates. Below the came out of the critic pickle. (I found out that if you throw the part in the pickle just after soldering, it cleans within seconds and you don't have to wait for the part to cool down. The only disadvantage is probably that this is really bad for your health, I try to avoid the fume when putting the hot part in the pickle, but I do not always succeed and immediately start to cough all over the place..... :-\ )

This is a very nice set to silver solder, I bought it second hand (as almost all the stuff I buy) 2 years ago. Its a propane / oxygen mixture.

Here is the backplate silver soldered to the side stands

Below the result up to now, the lathe and tool cabinet bolted to the wooden base plate

To be continued. Have a good weekend!

Regards Jeroen

 

[gbritnell]

Hi Jeroen,
I think the work you are doing on this Stuart lathe is fantastic. I would like to make one suggestion that might help the looks of your lathe. Being that this lathe is somewhat of a copy of an older style lathe I think it would look more appropriate to have handles with spokes in them. The holes that you have seem to represent a more modern design. If you go to the following website and browse through some of the more common lathes you will see what I mean. I know it's all a matter of personal taste but with the quality that you are putting into your lathe I think it would certainly benefit from spoked or elongated slots.
http://www.lathes.co.uk/index.html
gbritnell

 

[mklotz]

I'm glad you mentioned that, George. It was exactly my thought as well but, having already made one design change suggestion, I was concerned about appearing over critical.

Yes, indeed, Jeroen, spoked wheels would definitely make the appearance more authentic.

 

[gbritnell]

As a note of information I had contacted Jeroen off line to give him that suggestion. He replied and said that he would appreciate it if I would post in the thread so that everyone could read it, so that is what I did. I like you Marv hate to give too much advice thinking that the person receiving it might get the wrong impression of me trying to butt in on his work.
George

 

[coopertje]

Thank you George and Marv, I really appreciate that you take the time and effort to improve “my” lathe. And for the next time, please please please write down your thoughts and comments on design or machining related things. I am quite new in machining and receiving your feedback will only improve my skills and knowledge, or in this case the looks of my model. By the time I have enough of your comments, or do not agree with them I will let you know, deal?

I have looked at the link mentioned by George and indeed I did not find any lathe having the handwheel design as mentioned in the Stuart plans (which I have followed). Most of the early models have a 3 or 4 spoke design for carriage and tailstock, while for the cross slide I see a single handle.

First I will try to make elongated slots into the existing wheels to see how that looks. If it is still not the "authentic look" I could make the inner spoke out of 1mm brass plate, bend the spokes and silver solder them to a round outer ring (or turn one out of aluminum and mill the spokes after). For the cross slide handle I will ask my CNC lathe to make me some nice round ends on a rod, if I feed it some yummy G-code its generous with nice shaped parts....

First I will make some more smaller pieces and bits and start preparing the lathe parts to be painted.

Regards Jeroen

 

[coopertje]

Some more parts finished, the chuck key and tool post bold key.

The chuck key was quite simple to make. Took a piece of 4mm silversteel and made 6 flat pieces on one end. Used a C5 collet in a hex holder for this. Forgot to take some pictures from this process. Then I swapped it in the collet and drilled a hole of 2.5mm trough the middle

After this in the lathe I made a nice radius between the hexagon side and round 4mm part. Below the chuck key finished

Here its in place in the chuck, scale seems to match OK to me. Also I cut some stock material to be stored in the cabinet and the face plate has found his home. I will make the top of the cabinet from magnetic material, the tools planned to be in top are in constant danger.......my wife using the vacuum cleaner!

Next was the key for the tool post bolds. These bolds will get a square head of 3 x 3 mm. I did not made the bolds yet, they are next on the list. In order to make the square hole I decided to try to make a broach with 4 cutting sides. Took a piece of 4mm round material and in step of 0.1mm I made it square.

I did not harden the piece, I thought that the steel would be much tougher then the brass.... With the first attempt I had a piece 5 mm brass (pre-drilled 3mm) in the 3-jaw of the lathe and the broach in the pinole. The pressure I needed was so high that I pushed the brass out of the 3 jaw. Could not tighten it to much, I would squeeze the brass bush. So I made another bush, this time I took 6 mm and turned it over 3/4 of the length back to 5mm. In this way it could not be pushed into the chuck anymore. With some force I went through (nice when you have a bigger lathe ;D), but to my surprise the broach got rounded! So I should have hardened it!

I used a little file to square the corners, the part was not wasted. Then I silver soldered a piece of 4mm brass to it, from this the handle will be shaped.

And clean up in the lathe

Swapped the piece and turned the 4mm back to 2mm

Here is the end result, its a little out of proportion but for the moment good enough for me.

Next week I will be abroad again for work, when I return I will make the tool post bolds with square head and modify the handwheels. After this the machining is over and time to take all apart and start sanding, spraying and polishing!

Have a good weekend, regards Jeroen

 

[coopertje]

By the way (hope you don't mind that I post this here), beside the lathe I also did some work on a deburring machine I had bought about 1 year ago. It has been standing in my garage all that time without being able to use it. Now I felt like taking the machine apart, renew the wiring, clean, grease and repaint it. The previous owner painted it purple with a brush and welded some support to the guide..... In a way it was nice but I payed just a little money for it, 75 euros.

Here is how it looked at purchase

Pics from the "in process"

Finished machine:

From now I love to de-burr parts, it works very well
Another nice "new looking" old machine added to the collection ;D

Regards Jeroen

 

[Mosey]

I trust that you are aware that your early Workmate is practically a collectors item at this time??
I have one but it isn't in as nice condition as yours.

 

[coopertje]

Nope, I had no clue at all! Just coverred the top with some primer while spraying the deburring machine :-[

The ones you buy today are not as goos as these ones? Sincei already have one i never checked them out in the stores.....

Regards Jeroen

 

[Mosey]

The one's in the store are different, and I think they are junk. Take care of yours, and enjoy.

 

[coopertje]

Things are going a little slow lately, to many other things to do unfortunately. Below the progress I made.

The toolpost bolds are M2.5 and the cutting plate I have does not fit in the support tool for the lathe. So I made a adapter for it. For the ones interested below some pictures of the steps i took. There is no comment, the pictures explain enough I think.

For the toolpost bolds I used 4mm silversteel and turn one end down to 2.5mm and treaded it with M2.5 and finally part it off on the correct length

To not damage the tread of the blank I made a brass bush with M2.5 internal and made a cut in the length of the bush. With this I can clamp the blank in a chuck to make the square head.

Here are the blanks and the bush waiting to receive their square head

Since I had to square 10 bolds (made 2 spares) I decided to use the CNC machine, that one is much better in repetitive work the me! I took the center of the chuck and mounted the first piece to test the CNC code.

After the program finished

I have to thank Marv for his attention to make different toolpost bolds, it really makes a big difference in the appearance of the lathe as you can see below

Here is how they look mounted on the lathe

A job that has been on the to do list for quite some time is to mount a higher speed spindle on the CNC mill. Standard its running 3000 rpm but that is too slow for engraving. Also for future, when I start 3D milling, I would not like to have the original motor running on maximum speed for hours. So I bought a proxxon spindle, variable speed between 900 and 6000 rpm. It comes together with 6 collets in sizes between 2.35 and 6mm, perfect for the goal I am after! I want to engrave a type indication plate for the lathe, so I will take this opportunity to improve my tooling. I hope to post the results after upcoming weekend.

Thanks for checking in and have fun in the shop!

Regards Jeroen

 

[mklotz]

The toolpost looks great, Jeroen.

Now you will need to decide what tools you will make to mount in it. Here one can buy 1/16" square silver steel which can be ground to make authentic looking lathe tools. (If one is truly a perfectionist, they can be hardened as well.) However, I'm sure any small square stock could be used to make realistic tools.

 

[swilliams]

The square headed bolts are a great touch Jeroen. Really add something to the whole thing.Nice job on the 4 Jaw chuck. It's really coming on now :bow:

Steve

 

[arnoldb]

Jeroen, I've been following along on your build from the start, but have not commented yet - its difficult to say anything with a jaw frozen open.

My Dutch is a bitvery rusty, but let me just say:

:bow: :bow: Wel gedaan !!! Ik geevt je een k-punt voor jouw werk :bow: :bow:

Groete, Arnold

 

[coopertje]

Hi Steve, nice to hear from you again. Totally agree, with the square bolds its start to look like a lathe! Finishing the last pieces and bits, then lets try to paint it. Thats where I normally scewup all the effort I put in machining... :-X

Hallo Arnold,

Bedankt voor je reactie. Jouw Nederlands is nog steeds erg goed! Erg leuk om een bericht in het Nederlands te krijgen.

Groetjes Jeroen

 

[coopertje]

Whoeps....sorry Marv, forgot to reply on your post about the tools, shame on me!! :-[
I use tools with inserts on my normal lathe, so I do not have a tool grinding machine available. But I have some mill grinding machines, sure I can make some nice looking tools with that. I guess the tools in the old days have the same shape as today?

Spend some time to mount the new spindle on the Wabeco mill.

Started with cutting off a piece of 60x15mm aluminium

With the CNC I made hole and pocket. In the pocket there will be a nut. The idea is to have a piece of M10 wirebar? trough the original spindle of the Wabeco mill to fix the Proxxon spindle.

Next was to make a circular hole of 43mm, this will hold the Proxxon spindle

Test fit to see if everything still is according to the plans I have in mind

In order to prevent the Proxxon from rotating when mounted in the spindle I want to put a side support. When mounting the Proxxon in the spindle this support is pressed against the side of the milling machine and the setup is tightened with the M10 wirebar.

The Proxxon will be clamped in the holder. Therefor the middle of the 43mm hole will be slit so it can be reduced in diameter by a M5 hex screw.

Drilled 4.2mm over the complete length, then 5.5 for the first 50% of the length and tapped M5 in the lower part. Also made a counter sink for the hex cap

Opening the circle with a slitsaw of 1mm thickness

Below a picture of the M10 nut (used to tighten the holder in the original spindle) in progress

Finished! Hope above is a little clear for you all, if not below may explain better then my writing.

New spindle in action

After deburring the plate I put some layers of black paint over it

And this is what all above was about, my own made type plate

Next I will modify the handwheels as suggested by George and if I am lucky I would like to have the parts in the primer this weekend. The weather forecast is good, nice weather to spay parts outside!

More to come soon (hopefully)!

Regards Jeroen

 

[NickG]

That's come out great - well done! :bow: