Converting a wood lathe to a rudimetary metal lathe

If you're in to modifying motorcycles it doesn't take you long to realize some metal working machines would be a helpful.

A couple trips to the machine shop to spin up some spacers and odd bits will reinforce that it sure would be nice to do it yourself at home. More so if you get your measurements wrong and they make you something that doesn't fit.

Cost savings of building or buying a metal lathe is arguable, probably not worth it if you only do a few spacers every couple years. But if you do a lot or are a "tinkerer" a lathe is a reasonable purchase. Or maybe a mill....

Anyways, I've always made my own spacers and small pieces by hand. Gets it done and I'm practiced enough to turn out my own stuff accurately. some complex pieces too.

But it's slow, tedious laborious work and I'm not as young or patient as I once was. The more complex the piece, the more I think to myself I'm getting too old for this cr.........

I'm also not flush with cash.

So, in order to save some of my time (and sanity) I'm going to cobble up a basic lathe.

In order to keep costs down, I'm "recycling" lots of bits I have lying around.

Key parts are an old wood turning lathe I've inherited somewhere over the years, a basic x/y drill press vice, and numerous broken/ dulled HSS and Cobalt drill bits that I can grind into cutters.

Here's a pic of the humble beginnings:



It's in the tear down process, but it's sound so far. Headstock bearings are smooth a tight, frame is solid.

It's a single phase motor, so no speed control other than pulley steps. Slowest pulley is right around 300 rpm by the placard, so it's a touch fast for aluminum with HSS tools but will work. It's too fast for even mild steel unless I want to be grinding bits ever 3 minutes.

If it works well once I've got it all together I may look at swapping out a treadmill variable speed motor and try turning steel in the future.

The last piece of the puzzle I've got on order is a 6" 4 jaw independent chuck:



It's an ebay special. 80 bucks. I went 6" for more options on raw stock sizes and independent jaws for odd shaped pieces. They take longer to set up, but I'm ok with that. The nature of it will allow me to take pretty odd pieces of scrap and turn what I need from them. The desire to be able to turn odd shaped raw stock is mostly for cost savings in material purchase (IE: whatcha got lyin' around bud?) but an independent does have other pluses like turning off center (IE: making a cammed surface) .

Once I get all the parts together it will be a little bit of steel, a little bit of head scratching and a little bit of metal work.

Who knows? If it works well enough, I'll be able to turn out pieces to make the lathe itself better.

So far, I'm only into it for the price of the chuck. If I get away for another 50 bucks in stuff I'm sitting pretty as a basic Chinese sourced lathe can't be had for less than 500 bucks around these parts. Used ones just don't exist here.....

Please don't post up how it won't work, won't be accurate, gonna flex, etc. I know all this stuff, that's why I titled it "rudimentary metal lathe"......

 

Turns me on!

 

Cool........I always want it a mill but that would be impossible. My neighbour would report me
Good luck

 

I definitely like this thread...

So I've always wanted a metal lathe but the cost to use ratio was too high, as you have hinted at. I never really looked into actually buying so don't know too much about them technically. So did a search and found this:

Grizzly G8688 7" x 12" Mini Metal Lathe - Haloway Express Merchandise Center

would this be easier/cheaper? or is it just a $400 paper weight?