Questions to fellow PM owners

[John Fricke]

Does anybody have a paint code that matches mustard yellow?
When you assembled your lathe did you use the little plastic leveling feet they include? My concrete is pretty smooth and my lathe skates across the floor pretty easy with unbalanced piece in. I just added 500 Lb of concrete blocks. Hopefully that will hold her in place.

[jim carter]

just bring some mustard to home depot. they can match it.

[Rich Boehlke]

I read somewhere that PM sells touchup paint, don't remember the details, it might be worth giving them a call.

[alex carey]

I also remember reading that they sell mustard color paint.

I did not use the plastic leveling feet, it seemed to make it less stable. 500# definitely should help. If you don't intend on moving it you could bolt it down.

[Larry Marley]

Hi John,
if your lathe is shacking that bad, it is probably not leveled correctly.

try turning one leveler a 1/4 turn at a time and test for vibration.
I believe the mustard monster site had a write up on this. the last time i goggled the site Goggle blocked the link because it had virus issues.
Hopefully someone here can elaborate. I think the leveling technique may have come from Oneway...

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I used the leveling pads and haven't had any issues with vibration.

[Alec Moseley]

I have had the same experience - once leveled mine has not moved on me.

[James Gillespie, Jr.]

I leveled mine, using the included levelers and it hasn't wanted to move on me at all. Plus, with it being properly leveled, I don't have to worry about the lathe ways twisting and warping over time, which I've heard can happen.

[John Fricke]

It doesn't vibrate........just skates it's way across the floor. It's sitting pretty solid on all four feet even without the added weight. I'm a pretty big guy and I can't wiggle it. The piece I had in was pretty big and quite unbalanced. Once it got close to round I had no more issues.

[Jeff Nicol]

John, I had the levelers on and leveled the lathe as short as I could with the feet. I had more trouble with mine just like you are having. I took them off and made some spanners that connect the feet side to side and bolted them to the lathe. They raised it to exactly where I wanted it and a couple small shims and I have had no trouble with it. I think if you are doing anything large you will not like the flimsy little levelers.

Jeff

[Nathan Hawkes]

Well, I hope I don't end up thread-hijacking, but I used the feet, leveled the lathe first, and had issues with vibration. I put a ballast shelf & 8 bags of sand--400 lbs worth, plus heavy 8/4 yellow pine lumber. I have my lathe in a shed that has 2x8 joists for the floor. Before installing it I pulled up the floor & poured a 1500 lb. slab underneath the floor, to the level of the plywood floor. Apparently, there was a tiny bit of settling that happened between casting the floor and the arrival of the lathe.

I checked & re-checked the lathe, then while it was spinning & vibrating (with a blank that had no loose bark or cracks, and with the tailstock nice & tight), I examined the feet. This is where I noticed the settling problem. The plywood was vibrating up & down just a tiny bit--maybe 1/8" or 3/16" or so, more than plenty to cause a large vibration, which if the speed was brought up, could cause the lathe to move a bit. I tried crawling underneath the shed to shim the plywood, which ended up being impossible. An idea came after watching an insulation commercial--the expanding foam kind, so I drilled several holes around each leg & used liquid nails to fill any voids underneath the legs, in hopes that after it cured, the vibration would be decreased. It worked, but with a large out of round blank, it still can vibrate quite a bit, which when talking to other PM owners locally, is more than possible.


I'd suggest you re-check the feet, to make sure that they really are tight & level. Just a millimeter is more than enough to oscillate back & forth. I think that no matter what its going to shake with a big enough out of balance piece.