Recent shop project

[angboy]

At our recent Bubbasville meeting, I was expressing frustration with trying to turn anything large or heavy on my lathe, since the lathe wants to walk when I do. Well Dave M showed me what he'd done with his lathe to give it more weight and so I copied his idea. I messed it up when assembling, as I lost my drawing, and so ended up with it a bit too tall and so had to cut a little off, but all in all it came out well. My SO who was helping me said "oh yeah I forgot we were in a girl's shop" when 2 of my measurements were that we needed to cut a "squinch" off of one thing & then when I used a tape measure on something I came up with "1 line to the left of the little 4".

 

[PenMan1]

Ange:
You don't have to be a girl to make up names for the marks on atape measure. "4 and 3 little hash marks" is completely understood by ALL in this household!

Nice looking weight system! It should work nicely.

 

[Woodlvr]

Very nice Ang. I hope that works well for you. I put my lathe at about 27" for my office chair which is great but it is mounted on top of old kitchen cabinets with two layers of 3/4" ply and I still get vibration when trying to turn anything over 4".:frown:

 

[bensoelberg]

My SO who was helping me said "oh yeah I forgot we were in a girl's shop" when 2 of my measurements were that we needed to cut a "squinch" off of one thing & then when I used a tape measure on something I came up with "1 line to the left of the little 4".

My father, who has worked in some form of construction for close to 40 years, always calls those little lines "skosh" as in, "Cut it at 16 and a skosh." I understand and it always fits perfectly.

 

[Dave_M]

Looks great Angela.
That should help keep it from walking. How much weight were you able to add? I can't remember if I stuffed 150 or 200 pounds of sand in mine, but it don't wander regardless what I turn. In fact it's very hard for me to move the lathe anywhere now. I might invest in one of the heavy duty portable stands next.

Another thing I did was add a 3/4" oak ply shelf on top of the middle leg braces. I used 5/16" hardware to bolt the shelf to the angle braces all the way around. That helped tone down much of the vibration. Right now I can turn fairly large out of round pieces without much vibration. Really helps when doing fine detail work. One thing I've learned is turning large pieces requires a very different skill set (and tool set) from turning the small stuff. It's been a whole new learning experience for me.

Let us know how it works out for you.

 

[angboy]

Thanks everyone. Dave I got 120 pounds into it plus obviously a few more pounds with the weight of the plywood. Haven't tried anything on it yet- too hot to think about going to the shop, but hopefully soon...

 

[Dave_M]

Yeah I hear you there. Mighty toasty lately and the humidity isn't helping. Add to that all the smoke from the fires in the hills and it's just all around nasty outside.

 

[kenlicciardello]

Looks nice Angela. And thanks for making me feel better about my mess up. After the same meeting, my 12 year old son and I made a box for my jet 1642. All worked well until I didn't recess the lid like you did and it wouldn't fit with the swingout shelf in place. Oh well, I never liked that shelf anyway. Now I have to copy Dave and build the drawer to go ontop of the box.

This stuff if fun isn't it?

Dave, thanks again for letting us steal your good ideas.

Ken

 

[Dave_M]

You're welcome but it's probably been done many times before so I can't take credit for the idea. Funny how things start out then get torn down and rebuilt again and again until we find what works best for our own needs. My shop has changed a lot over the years and I'm sure it'll continue to change. One thing I wish it would quit doing is growing. Neither my garage nor my wallet can take much more.