Home Made Metal Lathe, part 2, finishing the bed and ways

[Claudio HG]

Hello. In this second part video the finished bed and the ways of my metal mini lathe that I am making at home.

The ways are made out of a flat 60x12 bar of cold rolled steel. This kind of bars come reasonably stright and with good dimensional shape, so they are easier to bring down to a good flat surface. To accomplish this I've used the Whitworth method of 3 plates. As I say in the video it was far quicker to bring the parts to a local machine shop to mill and grind them down to flat, but was interesting to try this method which, under certain aspects, can be viewed as a milestone in mankind technological development. And actually it is! I was able to get three flat surfaces with literally nothing more than a scraper, a stone+sandpaper, and a tad of dye ...and a LOT of labour!

Cheers from the Alps, Claudio.

[wizard69]

Cool build! I must have missed part 1.

As for that three plate method and even the technique of scraping Is pretty amazing. I often wonder how far back in history the process has actually been used. Considering some of the structures built by the Greeks, Moores and even stuff made in China over a couple thousand years ago, you would think that the 3 plate method has been around for a long time.

[Claudio HG]

Actually, AFAIK there was no great precision back in the history prior to 1700. There is an interesting video made by Machine Thinking titled "The Origin of Precision" (or something like that) about this topic. The most precise instrument known in the history is the Antikythera mechanism. Clickspring have made a series of beautiful videos about that. May be I will prepare a playlist to make it easier to watch these videos.
For the part 1 look at the video's description, you will find the link.
Also I am going to post here also the part 3, while for the part 4 I am still working because I need a press so in the meantime I've made an hydraulic press.

Cheers, Claudio.