Custom made tool rests - post your photos please!

[Alan Heffernan]

I have metal working equipment including a tool room lathe and welding and cutting equipment. So I am hoping to make some tool rests. I have a PM3520B lathe and the two tool rests that came with the lathe.

I am pondering making some bowl rests, a shorter straight rest, S-rests, etc. Of course I could buy them but it would be much more fun to make them myself. I have done some searching here but the threads are old and many of the links and photos are not functional or gone.

So I would appreciate you sharing some ideas with me.

[John K Jordan]

Alan,

I turn a lot of small things. My favorite short tool rest is not one I built but I could easily do so and plan on making some different sizes and variations when I get time. It is basically a thick steel plate welded to the top of a 1" post after being angled top and bottom, looking a bit like a trapezoid from the side view. Since the plate is angled towards the work I can get it very close. The top is machined flat such that it is horizontal. I don't have any good pictures of it but this one of a girl working on a handle shows the top of the rest.

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This picture, where I am turning some aluminum, shows a slightly different view of the top. Sorry I don't have a good picture of the whole thing. I think the plate is about 1/2" thick, maybe a little less. It is extremely sturdy.

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Since the top is flat it allows for secure precision scraping cuts where the tool is exactly horizontal. I may round over the back edge of the top some time, leaving about 1/2 of the thickness at the top horizontal.

I also made a long rest for one of my mini lathes by simply welding a round steel rod to a round piece that fit the banjo. I have some others with round rests as well, some commercially made. I don't like any of them. I do have a rest someone made that is better than a simple steel rod - it is a steel plate with a small diameter steel rod (maybe 1/4" or less) brazed to the edge of a thicker plate such that the small diameter of the rod can be put very close to the work. This works well.

Another favorite tool rest is a box rest made very simply from a flat bar about 4" x 1" x 3/8" thick, fastened to the top of a 1" vertical post so the 1" width of the bar is horizontal. The post is fastened at the very end of the horizontal bar. It is intended to be put deep into the box to work on the sides and bottom but I also use it for other things.

I want also to make a fairly short rest made from a plate welded vertically so the edge is at the top, and thinned on both ends. This would be be used to fit the ends into the tight spots very close to the centers where a larger rest will not fit.

JKJ

[Alan Heffernan]

Thanks John for the photos. With your description and the photos, I get the idea. I want to make a short one and the trapezoidal plate idea is one I may borrow. I like the idea of the box rest too. To fabricate these are well within the metalworking/welding tools that I have.

[John K Jordan]

Excellent! If you want I could take another picture or two when I get back down the hill to the shop. But the ideas are pretty simple!

I love the ability to work in metal as well as wood. When I built my new shop I put in a small welding room with MIG, TIG, stick, gas, and a plasma cutter. (Yea!) A good Metabo grinder, a 20 ton press, drill press, and a couple of metal-cutting bandsaws let me do almost everything I can imagine! (No shear or brake) Plumbed for compressed air to drive the plasma cutter. I have double doors opening onto a concrete porch so I can weld outside when the weather is nice and extend 20' steel stock inside for cutting on the big bandsaw. Another building has about 4 tons of steel stock. I use this for fun and teaching and farm maintenance.

In my bay area I put a small milling machine and a metal lathe. Good fun! And heat and air makes it fun all year!

I realized one day I could make things from wood, paper, plastic, and metal but not cloth. (I needed to sew some seat belt webbing to make something.) So I bought a sewing/embroidery machine. Don't spread it around or there goes my reputation as a tough guy. :-) I also shear the llamas and alpacas and keep all that is needed to turn a fleece into a hat - spinning wheels, etc. My passion is teaching kids and teens (and older) new skills they don't normally have access to so this is a dream shop for me! Hmm, I just remembered I have no potter's wheel and kiln...

Here's the shop layout in case you are interested:

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[Robert Henrickson]

Your shop is just a tiny bit smaller than the LOT my house was on in Toronto.

[Larry Copas]

A couple of months ago I decided to duplicate a 6” standard Robust Comfort rest. Bent some 3/16” steel in the press. Welded on a 1” tool post than welded on a 3/8” tool steel top rail. Put the rest in the heat treating oven to harden the top rail. Came out great and I really like using it.

One thing I learned is tool steel does not like to be welded due to the high carbon content. I struggled a bit to get it welded. I used 3/8” for the top rail because that was all I had on hand. Ordered some 1/4” 0-1 with the intent to make several more. I'll try welding again but if it is not acceptable, I may try another means of attachment.

I put that project on the back burner as I'm making some sharpening aids at present.

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Nearly complete with that project so I'll get back on the rests soon. Have to save some time to turn wood. So many hobbies....so little time.

[John K Jordan]

Your shop is just a tiny bit smaller than the LOT my house was on in Toronto.

Oh my! I don't know if I'm blessed or spoiled. Or both! We live on a 27 acre farm.

In '03 and faced with retiring soon we wanted to move out of the city so my wife started looking around for a place in the country. She would research, take notes, make lists, and drive around and look at places. She would organize road trips with few in the same area then take me out to look.

She found this farm and it looked so bad she turned around and left. There was junk laying around and it was so overgrown you couldn't even tell there was a barn 30 ft from the lane! The guy lived with about 30 cats at one time which was unkind to the house. Apparently no one else was interested in it either. About 8 months later she noticed it was still on the market so she looked again then took me to look at it. I loved the way the land was - gentle hills, good fields and woods, a timber frame house, old barn, city water, several other outbuildings. They all needed work. We offered WAY less than the asking price and bought it. I tell people the good Lord was saving it for us! If the guy had just spent a thousand to clean up the place he could have made 50.

Had to remodel the house, rebuild part of the barn, repair the out-buildings, build some animal shelters and pens, run good fencing, clear a LOT of brush, cut in some roads, put in an electric gate, livestock waterer, broadband, etc. I built the shop about 3 years ago and started moving things in before the walls were up. Some day I may actually get everything finished. Nah.

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JKJ

[Leo Van Der Loo]

I have made a number of toolrests, just straight as well as curved, all simple rests that work for me, though most are heavier than standard rests except for the inboard on my large lathe (metal lathe)

A round bar and flat steel welded together make a good rest, if you want real slick and smooth glue a hardened rod to the top edge, I haven’t found the need yet.

A couple of these pictures were made hen the rest was brand new and have been improved upon, but they are basically just like shown, the curved ones I have two, one with a righthand curve and one with a lefthand curve, curved piece is 1 inch thick.

I don’t like a flat top on my rests, if changing my angle of the tool I get a sudden leverage change when going from the edge onto the back of the flat part, so I round them or keep the front edge sharp.

Withe the thicker flat steel I grind the bottom of the top edge back so I can get close to the turning, like shown in picture 4, HTH

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[Dok Yager]

I have only made a couple so far for my new lathe. My next one will be a curved rest for inside and outside.

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[Brice Rogers]

I enjoy making tools. For my original 9" Craftsman lathe, I made a small handful of tool rests including a 2", 6", a curved bowl rest, a mini-comfort rest, and a captive hollowing rest. When I upgraded to my 22" G0766, I made an adapter to go from the 7/8" (?) craftsman to a 1" Grizzly so that I could use all of the original rests. It looks a little strange but it works well and the coupling doesn't get in the way.

I also bought a 12 inch section of 1/4 wall thickness pipe and quartered it to make a curved comfort rest for the Griz. Buying the pipe eliminated the need to bend the metal and the curve came out beautiful. I really like using that. Of all of my rests, the one that I use the least is the original one that came with the G0766 ( personal preference for wanting a steeper angle on the top.)

In one of the pictures, you'll see a whole bunch of rests. I think that there are two (the cast ones) that I did not make.

I have not had a problem getting nicks and dings in the rests. I do occasionally touch them with a file or piece of sand paper.329557329558329559329560329561

[Alan Heffernan]

Thanks for the photos. Was that a piece of 4" diameter pipe that you used for the comfort rest?

[Brice Rogers]

Yes, Alan, it was 4 inch I.D. and 4.5 inch O.D. I split the pipe lengthwise using an abrasive grinder with a thin wheel. Then I used my metal bandsaw to cut it to the desired length and to rough shape the curved section. After that I did the final shaping with the angle grinder followed with some power sanding and filing. The finish really came out nice.

When I did the welding, I had everything bolted down with the correct angles and then I tack welded. Keep in mind that most tack welds will pull stuff slightly out of alignment so, you'll want to re-adjust it using a machinist square after a tack weld or two but before finish welding.

[Alan Heffernan]

Thanks Leo for the photos, lots of good stuff here.