Bought a small lathe: Convert to Pole Lathe

[Neumo]

I was in my favorite tool shop at lunch time, which is a proper old fashioned Aladdin's cave of a place & I saw an old lathe sitting in the corner. It does not have a motor, but has a wheel for attaching a pulley based one. It was £7 so I though I would have a punt & see if I can convert to use as a pole lathe. It is only 24" long as is made of ally, with wooden feet, so would be ideal if I can work out how to convert it into a pole lathe. The guy in the shop reckoned it was from WW2 era & it all works, just needs a bit of TLC to get rid of the rust before I put some oil or grease on the bearing; which would be better? Anyway, I will clean it up & will bring it along to the Moot to see if I can get it working on a pole & turn me some wood. Do you reckon I can just wrap a string round the belt pulley or wood that wear out too fast, as it is not that wide. I may need to replace the pully wheel with some wood. Will be fun finding out.

Here are some pics, with a few Moot supplies in the background:

 

[resnikov]

No idea about what you want to do to it but I'm very interested in idea of it. Wood turning is something I would to have a go at and for £7 you cannot go wrong. Will enjoy seeing it at the moot and how you get on with it.

 

[Neumo]

I tried a home made pole lathe at theBushcraft Magazine event earlier in the year & wanted to have my own little setup, that was light enough to carry into a wood ideally. That one was a lathe bed (or whatever you call it) so had the 2 pointed ends that hold the wood, with power being applied with the pole lathes sting wapped around your bit of wood. This would be slightly different as the string will hopefully go round the 'drive wheel' bit at one end, where the pulley used to go. That is the plan anyway. I have one gauge & will bring some biggish chisels, then see how I get on. Should be fun. It would be nice to meet you after the Amasteel group buy.

 

[Stanleythecat]

I was in my favorite tool shop at lunch time, which is a proper old fashioned Aladdin's cave of a place & I saw an old lathe sitting in the corner. It does not have a motor, but has a wheel for attaching a pulley based one. It was £7 so I though I would have a punt & see if I can convert to use as a pole lathe. It is only 24" long as is made of ally, with wooden feet, so would be ideal if I can work out how to convert it into a pole lathe. The guy in the shop reckoned it was from WW2 era & it all works, just needs a bit of TLC to get rid of the rust before I put some oil or grease on the bearing; which would be better? Anyway, I will clean it up & will bring it along to the Moot to see if I can get it working on a pole & turn me some wood. Do you reckon I can just wrap a string round the belt pulley or wood that wear out too fast, as it is not that wide. I may need to replace the pully wheel with some wood. Will be fun finding out.

Here are some pics, with a few Moot supplies in the background:


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Hi Neumo

This lathe works slightly differently to a pole lathe in that one of the centres actually drives the work. So the pulley is connected to the center and that centre in driven in to the work to rotate it. The pole lathe is much more simple, as you stated the cord is wrapped around the work and the spring of the pole drives it in rotation between two smooth centres. The pedal will be in front of you and easier to operate whereas with the metal lathe it will need to be offset in some way. You can build the simplest of lathes with two pieces of threaded bar ground to 60 degree smooth points then the rest can be found on the woodland floor. I'm not saying don't use what you have got because it looks great fun and a lovely project to get working but by the time you have mounted it to a bed at a comfortable working height, found a pole, made your pedal... you've made a pole lathe already!

 

[Stanleythecat]

or you could try this...

http://www.garlic.com/~arcetek/media.html (go to last pic)

or http://www.technologyforthepoor.com/PedalPowerReport/image016.jpg

 

[shaggystu]

if you could find yourself a treadle table for an old sewing machine it'd be a really easy job to join the two together, not quite a pole lathe i know but still foot powered wood turning

stuart

 

[resnikov]

I tried a home made pole lathe at theBushcraft Magazine event earlier in the year & wanted to have my own little setup, that was light enough to carry into a wood ideally. That one was a lathe bed (or whatever you call it) so had the 2 pointed ends that hold the wood, with power being applied with the pole lathes sting wapped around your bit of wood. This would be slightly different as the string will hopefully go round the 'drive wheel' bit at one end, where the pulley used to go. That is the plan anyway. I have one gauge & will bring some biggish chisels, then see how I get on. Should be fun. It would be nice to meet you after the Amasteel group buy.

Sorry I missed you at the moot.