huge metal lathe for bowl turning

[Lynn Kasdorf]

I plan to acquire from a friend (free) a monster of a metal lathe- I think it has about a 24" swing and weighs on the order of 4 tons.

One (rather sicko) use I have thought of for this thing is doing large bowl turnings. No doubt the spindle speed is not high enough, but I could fabricate a mounting for a router on the compound and use a spinning rather than a fixed cutter. Anybody out there tried anything like this? There was a segment on new yankee workshop about some guys using a router on a big lathe.

If I could get the spindle speed up high enough it should make for a sweet bowl lathe, given its enormous mass! It aint gonna walk across the floor when the work is out of balance!

[Jim Becker]

For big bowls, you don't want or need a lot of spindle speed...remember, it's rim speed you need to be concerned with!

[Paul Downes]

Lynn, the bigger the bowl the slower you go. It's not really different from metal turning. It all breaks down to surface feet per min. The primary difference might be that if a big bowl blows up, a face shield might not be enough protection. Maybe you aught to get a bullet proof vest.:D