Turning with an engineering lathe

[Night Train]

I am rubbish at turning!
There, I've said it.

All my attempts at turning have been poor. I can't turn a straight cylinder and I can't turn evenly shaped bobbins or balls, they are always lopsided so I have avoided turning.

However, I was good with an engineering lathe turning metal so I was wondering if anyone has turned wood with an engineering lathe?

I am only thinking of turning the ocasional small part like drawer knobs, or a spigot or taper on a piece just to save working them by hand. I figured the tool holder on an engineering lathe with an appropriate cutter would save me a lot of bother and I can use it for metal turning as well.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thank you.

 

[tekno.mage]

There is no reason you can't turn wood on a metal-working lathe. A very long time ago when I was much younger and working for the MOD after leaving school we occasionally used to turn small parts from some dark-coloured hardwood on our metal-working lathe and that worked just fine.

However, having said that you might have to mess around with the tooling to get a decent finish on anything other than very hard dense woods as you will be doing the equivalent of scraping. I saw someone in our workshop try and turn a wooden knob (to match one that had been broken on a cupboard in his office) from the end of a large broom handle and although the shape was perfect, the finish was absolutely terrible.

I must admit that if I had access to a metal-working lathe, I'd probably use it for cutting threads on suitable woods as I'm sure that will be easier than chasing threads by hand!

tekno.mage

 

[jasonB]

It can be done, with softer woods use a tool with a high top rake so you get some shear cutting, on harder woods then a standard top rake is fine.. The only thing to watch is the adrasive from sanding does not get onto the bed and under the carrage.

You can also hold a round bar in the toolpost and use standard woodturning chisels if you want some freehand work.

I actually turned up a backplate so I can mount a woodturning chuck on my engineering lathe.

Jason

 

[TEP]

Ditto on all the above. Although I have my doubts of it working on any soft wood. I would say that you may get it to work on Lignum, Blackwood, Boxwood, but still the surface will probably need a lot of finishing work.

Tek, I beg to differ, I could chase a thread in the time it took you just to think about setting up a metal lathe. It is NOT difficult, just find the right speed and you will do it. Saw a great description by Fred Holder (USA) a while back where he chased a thread just by turning the chuck by hand and holding the thread chaser in the other. It does work and speed will come with practice.

 

[hog&bodge]

My friend has used his to turn small goblets ect but is not
to happy doing it he said it gets saw dust in the mechanism
and he hates cleaning it up...oil and wood shaving do not go
together well..according to him :lol:

 

[Night Train]

Great, sound like it could work, bar the mess.

I would only be turning hardwoods anyway and it would be infrequent.
Maybe some sort of sheild over the bed to direct away most of the wood shavings and dust may help as would high powered extraction.

I will start saving for one I think. I am only looking for something like the little Axminster SIEG C0 in size.

 

[Bob Chapman]

I have a small metalworking lathe and have used it in the past for turning perfectly parallel sided dowels in a very wide range of woods. I used a horizontal scraper (one of my woodturning ones, held in the toolpost) at centre height. Remove the burr on the scraper first by rubbing it upside down on an oilstone. Hard woods (i.e. physically hard) turn best but softer species can be turned. The secret is to make very fine final cuts - in the order of a few thou and use the automatic feed mechanism, both of which can be done easily on a metalworking lathe. A good surface was obtained without much effort. I wasn't sanding my dowels, but I'm sure they would have sanded to a very good finish.

Like most things, the secret is to experiment or, as my dad used to say, 'suck it and see'.

Bob