I haven't turned a thing on a lathe in 20 years or so. I used to build banjos and we had a very old overhead motor belt driven lathe. What a beast it was. The lathes I see for sale now are very small and are completely freehand (toolrest only). The one we used before had a screw drive to make a constant coarse cut down the length of the stock as well as dials for making precise X & Y cuts. The ones I do see now that aren't what I would call a "freehand" style (toolrest only) but have the cranks & dials are called "metal lathes". Are wood lathes like I used to use still sold or do all of you woodturners just do it freehand? Does a metal lathe work for wood as well as metal (I'm assuming not because they would turn at too high speed)? I'm interested in buying one but not for bowls or pens but table legs, chair backs etc. Do I just need to buy one of the Delta, Jet etc. models and then get a duplicator attachment? Monty
I turn Both METAL & WOOD You aska fair question her. Metal lathes turn MUCH slower 65/rpm to 500/ rpm Wood on the other hand turns Fast
500/rpm to 5000/rpm all wood latehs are hend held tools excetion being the Duplicator lathes that you do repitition work on (legs, Chair backs etc) Duplicators hare just that, you can get attachments for most wood lathes for that type of work but the high Dollar Duplicator lathes are EXPENSIVE and much more accurate than the type with an attachment. METAL lathes like you have mentioned are LINE SHAFT Metal lathes NO MORE USED due to OSHA Rules and regulations some of these old Behemths are used for Wood but the old babbot bearings could not talke the fast speed so many have been converted to high speed ball bearings na dsuch adn DO VERY FINE WORK for most hobbiest as well as a few Professional wood turners and many adaptions have been made to them to make these older, Heavy machines very handy and desireable machine to operate.
Now I am sure this may be more than you asked for Me I have had ands used till recently an OLD (VERY OLD) Metal Lathe (Engine lathe) to turn very large LOGS 24 inches diameter to 10 foot in lengh I did not SPIN fast to say the least a log that size coming out of a chuck due to wood breakage can be real SCARY! to say the leat and also hard to get out of the way of. I used it in the Very slow and slower yet cycle (2 rpm) and a 5 HP 1/2 shank Routher as a Cutting tool. I just had to give up this method as the work was just to heavy to handel any more.
Just have fun turning Now Getting a LOG into the tub of LDD now that is a Whole Nuther Thread LOL
Have a great day and Happy Turn> I haven't turned a thing on a lathe in 20 years or so. I used to
Monty That may have been a pattern makers lathe which was used for turning wooden patterns from which casting molds were made (amongst other things). Pattern makers have been over-run by CNC lathes and plastics and very few now exist.
Most good current lathes have extension beds available to enable long lengths to be mounted between centres. If there isn't an extension, give it a miss because most lathes are very tight when mounting a full size table leg.
IMHO, the duplicators on the market under many $100,000 are a waste of time as they scape instead of cutting the timber and many times the precise, sharp edge at e.g the junction of a cove and fillet are lost. The only successful one I have seen is an Italian CNC auto lathe that used knives instead of scrapers and that set the owner back in the vicinity of $900,000. Not exactly small change. The set up costs for each job was fairly high so he had to make 100s for it to be viable. Fortunately he had the work but drove most of the small turners out of business due to low item cost.
A really good spindle turner can turn out four identical table legs much cleaner and faster than any cheap duplicator.
The key is to get a reasonable lathe with reasonable tool and practice until you are totally familiar with your tools and can make precise, accurate and clean cuts and can repeat it time and again without variation. Darlow, Rowley and others have written a lot on this and are well worth a read.
I'm a graduate of a three year college trade woodturning course in Sydney where the initial focus was on spindle work and we didn't proceed until we could turn multiples of an item which were all identical by eye and by measurement.
All our course found that having achieved that, we were confident in the use of our tools and the theory behind what we were doing that the transition to faceplate and bowl work came readily. I have noticed that the transition from bowl to spindle does not seem to come as readily for people who start with bowl work because minor errors can be designed out of bowls as they are usually a once off event and they don't seem to have the need to achieve the level of accuracy of a spindle turner.
I forgot about Ernie Conover's books because we don't see them in OZ very often. First rate material. George Hatfield retired last year as the head of the woodturning section of the TAFE college in Sydney and has been touring the States at times for the last few years doing demos etc. If you get a chance to meet him, have a chat because he is a very accomplished spindle turner, in fact he's very accomplished in all facets of woodturning. He has written a lot of good material for Australian Woodworker but as much as we beat up on him he seems reluctant to put it all together in a book.
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