That's a pretty neat little lathe and looks like it would defenitely work well for turning pens and wooden handles for things.
Well, it was good for pens - I don't think I ever tried it for anything larger. It had an extremely limited swing, maybe 10" between centers, and the makeshift-tool-rest-in-a-makeshift-tool-holder arrangement wasn't sturdy enough for heavy turning.... but it was pretty neat to work with, and I really wish I could've met whoever made it (it was at least third hand by the time it made it to me).
Defenitely alot more work into it than mine, that shows for sure, lol.
Maybe... but what I found most interesting is how
simply it was made. It looks like the whole thing was probably built with nothing more than a drill (press, presumably), some variety of saw, a couple taps, and a screwdriver. No welding, no milling, no turning.
I just threw my little lathe together in an afternoon with what I had laying around to get the thing running, and figured I'd try turning a pen/nib holder to see how it worked, and have been playing with making them since. It seems to work pretty well so far, but if I were to really get into it much more seriously, I'd probably just make up some patterns and pour the parts for a real mini wood lathe, just pour it in cast iron so I dont have to worry about it flexing or anything.
I wish I had that option. My original path to a lathe was going to be building one ala David Gingery's "Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap" books, but setting up a foundry out frount got nixed as too messy, and out back got nixed as being too close to the woods. Probably for the best, though - I'm sure I would've gotten distracted halfway through the sand casting book, gone off on a wild tangent into something like jewelry casting, and never gotten around to the lathe.
Really, I just joined up to be able to read through the the IAP documents and see how everything is done, and get various ideas for the pens.
Y'hear that, boys? He just said he was here to steal our docs!
Well, y'know what we say to doc thieves around here?
Have at it!
I tend to read and look through everything I can, just figuring it out through messing with the stuff, guides/documents, and everyone else's questions, that way I dont post the same questions that really has been asked so many times before.
I tend to do the same - and the forums have a handy feature where before I go to post a new thread, it suggests a list of other threads that I was probably just too lazy to search for in the first place, which helps keep me from asking things for the hundredth time. Still, it seems like there are always more questions that haven't been asked yet, or that haven't quite gotten satisfactory answers yet - or that have room for new twists and tricks (although "How do you apply a CA finish?"
does seem pretty well played out).
I was looking at your pictures and wondering how you were driving that pen with the drill chuck? Up till now, usually I just drove the file handles and such with a screw in the chuck, to use it as a drive screw, but pens now, Ive been using that spur center. It doesnt look like your really holding onto a turned down section, or a drive screw, so was curious how you were driving that.
For most of the pens on that one, I just used a standard 7mm pen mandrel (which, like 3/4" NPT pipe isn't 3/4", isn't actually 7mm at all, but around .247"), but that doesn't work for closed-end pens, so I had to do something different - and I think you already stumbled across the answer.
The tail end was held on the sharpened-rod-in-a-plain-bearing "live center", and
I believe the front end (which was tubed like half of a 7mm/slimline pen) was driven on a hand-filed (this was long before I had the mill) pin chuck based on Don Ward/its_virgil 's designs in the library (see below), held in the headstock Jacobs chuck :
Use of a pin chuck for turning closed end pens. Click on the image below to begin download of PDF. Author: Don Ward
www.penturners.org
There's also a slim chance I was using Skiprat's O-ring pin chuck, although I don't
think I ever got that one to work for me :
This tutorial demonstrates that you do not need the accuracy of a machined part and a matching metal pin to make a serviceable pin chuck. Click on the image below to begin download of PDF. Author: Steven Jackson
www.penturners.org
(I didn't get Don's to work very well, either - it was pretty crudely made with the limited tools I had available at the time. I've always meant to give it another try, now that I could make a better one, but just haven't found the motivation to try another closed-end pen yet - or at least anything I couldn't just drive with a dead center)
