My new lathe...

[Rob Price]

Major thanks to Jay, the manager of the Birmingham Woodcraft (and fellow creeker and new friend) for helping me into the vortex...

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[Jerome Hanby]

Jay is a great guy!

[Derek Gilmer]

Congrats! I'm hoping a box much like that shows up at my house tomorrow.

[Cary Falk]

I see no lathe, just boxes.

[alex grams]

hmm, I see 4 boxes and can identify 3 (lathe, extension bed and the woodcraft medium speed grinder).

Whats in box #4? Someone had a busy shopping day!

[Rob Price]

Box 4 is the nova chuck package with the accessory jaws from woodcraft and a set of the micro mesh 3x4 pads. It was a busy shopping day. The bench you see in the pic had to be modified (shorter 6" and 6" less length) to work with the lathe. I had to run power over to that wall as well. Hopefully I can get the lathe up and running by tomorrow.

[alex grams]

Good deal Rob. I just got my new 46-460 set up and made a new turning cabinet for it. I will post some pics later this evening when I get home of my setup. I made the cabinet top deep and set the lathe towards the front and put my woodcraft grinder on the back of the bench at the tailstock so I can move the cabinet away from the wall and have access/use of the lathe or the grinder.

I got the wolverine sharpening system for my grinder and got it set up, I highly recommend it. It made sharpening the roughing gouges/bowl gouges/scrapers ridiculously easy.

[Dave Mura]

Congrats on the new purchase!
http://chdsolutions.com/img/11d867796d85db8cad5280ac44cec7c1.jpghttp://chdsolutions.com/img/a57d48399922b03419153a9760c5ce53.jpghttp://chdsolutions.com/img/beda24c1e1b46055dff2c39c98fd6fc1.jpg

[Rob Price]

Okay, for the skeptics out there. Make note, I have no idea what I'm doing at this point other than making chips and shavings. I had some scrap mahogany 1" laying around so I played with it. My sharpening skills are not legendary, but even after some pitiful attempts on the grinder I could tell a huge difference in the tools. tomorrow I'm going to harbor freight to pick up a stand for the grinder (wouldn't fit on the bench) and attaching the extension. Then I have some serious picking up to do. I re-did my entire DC system, converted over to smooth walled PVC pipe so I could make the longer run to reach the lathe. Plus I had to add some outlets, and modify the bench. My shop is a mess!!!

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[gary Zimmel]

Congrats on the new lathe Rob...
As a side note don't post it on the turners forum. They don't take prisoners over there.;)
That vortex is very strong.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

Congrats on the new lathe Rob...
As a side note don't post it on the turners forum. They don't take prisoners over there.;)
That vortex is very strong.

Hmmm... I was just going to post, "You do know that there's a Turnes forum here, don't you?". Maybe I shouldn't. That vortex cost me LOTS of money...

[Baxter Smith]

Congrats on the lathe Rob. You will have fun with it!

[Rob Price]

yea, I'm already several hundred in the hole. All in all this is quite an expensive endeavor- lathe/extension/Nova chuck/tailstock chuck/grinder/stand/tools/face shield/calipers/turning DVD/DC modifications/electrical modifications...

I figured I would post my tool gloat here and wait until I actually have something to show for my efforts to post over in the turner's forum. They've pulled me into the vortex...

On a side note, with all the time I've spent re-arranging my shop, I've managed to add a lathe and grinder, but found a better way to arrange things and the shop actually feels bigger and less cluttered. Win!

I'm finally up and running, the lathe is assembled and bolted down. The grinder is up on a stand and in it's new home. the bench that the lathe is on used to house my spindle/belt sander and drill press, so I had to make new stands for those (btw: harbor freight makes a great little cheapo grinder stand that works perfectly for my 10" drill press- they also had a drill press table I had to have :)).

Now I just have to clean up the boxes and styrofoam and I can start mangling some scrap turnings.

[alex grams]

Rob, which tools did you buy? I started out with the PennStateIndustries Benjamin's Best set. I too, while experienced in plane/chisel/carving sharpening, was new to using the grinder for sharpening, but after not much work on the grinder with the wolverine jig, there is a HUGE difference in quality of cut.

I didn't have any fingernail spindle or bowl gouges, so grabbed a pair of those from Woodcraft yesterday (they had 20% off individual sorby turning tools, so might as well take advantage of it).

I had turned my first bowl with the tools coming factory sharpened, but like i said, it is a new world after sharpening them even a little bit.

Also, i find myself going underspeed on the lathe while I get used to the machine/tools, which results in more tooling marks/tearout. I guess I am leery on approaching full speed, but last night I got a spindle set in well and turned its speed up and the difference in cut was significant. Much cleaner/solid cutting.

[Bill White]

Congrats.
Have ya got a GOOD friend in the banking business? You're gonna need one.
My humor for the day.....
Bill

[Rob Price]

I bought the 6 piece set of Benjamin's Best from Amazon (from Penn State Industries) and then I bought the "VersaChisel" 2 pack set from Amazon. I'm using the first edition of the Keith Rowley book. My wife's grandfather was an amazing craftsman, and I was able to grab some of his personal library after he passed- unfortunately I never got to do any woodworking with him. I finished the first few exercises today, with the roughing gouge and spindle gouge. I built a version of his sharpening jig, I figured I would try that before I spent more money on a commercial jig. So far it works pretty well. I'm the same way with speed, I guess that's 'normal' as we get more comfortable with the lathe. We're clearly moving off topic, maybe it should be moved to the turner's forum...

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