Home built wood lathe

**Angus** · Feb 8, 2015, 09:30 PM

Hi Jere. The lathe has pieces I collected over the years from different jobs I was doing when fitting fishing boat engines & repairing equipment around the engine rooms, I stored them away for when I needed them. The brass control lever just below the chuck is the forward reverse lever from a boat we salvaged for the Gardner diesel engine & there are quite a few other pieces from other boats in there as well. The frame above the lathe carries my router & is driven by a separate engine through a gear box with the chain, for fluting timber & is shifted down to the attachment you can see just below it & carried at both ends It can be adjusted to travel any angle so it can can cut a tapered piece of turning. It can also be driven by the lathe for cutting candy twists. My home country is Australia & I live right at the bottom in the island state of Tasmania in a little sea side town of Penguin.

**wizard69** · Oct 15, 2017, 05:02 PM

Now that is a lathe, more pictures please. I'd be especially interested on information that details what the spindle is made from? Is it a DIY spindle or and repurposed spindle from another machine.

On another note this might not be suitable for this forum but pictures of some of the work coming off this machine would be inspiring. If you put that much effort into the lathe I can just imagine what some top the items coming off the lathe look like.

**Angus** · Oct 16, 2017, 11:06 PM

Hi. The whole lathe is built from scratch. Spindle is made from 2" bright steel & thread size is 1 1/2" 6 TPI wit thread to take metal lathe chucks if I need to use one. I lived in Smithton far North west Tasmania at the time & I had access to big metal lathes at a steel fabrication place there & was able to turn the shaft & cut the threads & put no 2 morse tapers in the ends of the shaft. The lathe was built quite heavy as I have two smaller lathes & both vibrate far to much for what I wanted to do on them. I am getting to old now to stand for long , so my grand son & son in law are going to take them to Victoria Main land Aust. My son inlaw is an artist & sculptor I think he will come up with so good looking work from the lathes. A few lessons coming up there But he is a quick learner. I have turned cradles, Rocking chairs,& quite a lot of bigger pieces that are a bit to big to put up on here.

**dbeierl** · Mar 22, 2018, 05:39 PM

Originally Posted by Angus

see what you think.

I think we need a bigger photo. 640x480 is just a tease for something this elaborate.

**suther51** · Mar 22, 2018, 10:52 PM

Inspiring! I expect I will be seeing your lathe in my sleep. So many of the posts here are of things that industry could build but do not and that with so many more (unlimited) resources. Makes one think🤔
Eric

**Jon** · Mar 24, 2018, 12:41 PM

Delivery trucks on their way to Angus's lathe:

**Beserkleyboy** · Jul 19, 2018, 05:46 PM

Hi Jon, origin of this picture? thanks very much for hosting this wonderful site, cheers

Jim in Sunny South Coast NSW Australia

**Radioman** · Jul 19, 2018, 05:47 PM

What I would really like to see is a video of you running the machine and explaining what all those attachments do!
Wat an amazing machine and an even more amazing operator!
I hope your sil and son will appreciate that machine as much as you do.