Faceplates for wood lathe

[Dennis Ford]

I made this batch of face-plates for some friends. The three on the right are 1" 8 tpi, the rest are 1-1/4 8 tpi. I prefer using a faceplate instead of a chuck for large heavy turning projects and enjoy making tools when practical.

[ray hampton]

how did you space the holes ? nice job

[Terry Beadle]

My guess is that you have a metal shop ! A nice lathe and maybe an indexer on a mill?

Please let us know a summary of how you made these.

Thanks !

[Matt Cook]

Nice work. It's nice when machines share a common thread with fasteners. Some goofy equipment I've owned in the past had crazy pitches making custom tooling like these more difficult to build.

Based on the parts, I'm gonna bet you used an indexing head using a manual mill or drill press. Looks kinda like a scotch bright finish and tooling marks are difficult to make out in the picture. It would be possible to make these without the use of a metal lathe. I too am curious.

[Bruce Page]

Just a guess.. modified pre-drilled pipe flanges?

[Eric DeSilva]

Looks like steel to me... which makes me wonder... What kind of welder are you using? Too neat to be stick, but that's waaay to thick for my MIG...

Not being a turner, do these have to be precision enough that you turn them after welding the nuts on, or can you just cut a flat plate on a rotating vise on the mill and weld the nut on afterwards?

[Dennis Ford]

They are made from steel plate and regular nuts. 1-1/4" 8 tpi nuts are non standard but not hard to find. The welding was done with a stick welder, I am not a pro welder and it shows but they won't break. I have made several of these and use this process:
* Drill center holes in a fair sized piece using hole saw on drill press.
* Cut plates out with torch.
* Put stub arbor through hole, tighten nut and weld nut to plate.
* Put stub arbor in metal lathe, screw on face-plate and dress up edge and face.
* Reverse face-plate on arbor and cut relief in end of nut
* Cut a circular scratch for screw hole location.
* "Index" using torpedo level on chuck jaws and make horizontal scratch to locate each hole.
* Center punch and drill holes
* Put face-plate on wood lathe and use angle grinder while lathe spinning to remove tool marks.

[David Warkentin]

Cool! Thanks for explaining it to us.

[Matt Cook]

The welding was done with a stick welder, I am not a pro welder and it shows but they won't break.

In this case, it doesn't matter how they were welded or what the weld looks like as long as the weld is strong enough for the application.

* "Index" using torpedo level on chuck jaws and make horizontal scratch to locate each hole.

I don't understand this step. Using this process, how did you determine how far apart the holes should be to get the correct pattern?

* Cut a circular scratch for screw hole location.

Very smart. I noticed the groove and wondered if that's what it was for. Goes to show you that a little creative thinking can get you around the need for complex setups and expensive machines.

Just about the only step you really needed the metal lathe for was facing and making the plate concentric. Excellent use of the tools you had at hand!

[Dennis Ford]

Matt;
I have a four jaw chuck on my metal lathe, with the jaws aligned like an "X", I put a level across the top corners and then use the cross-slide to mark a horizontal scratch. Repeating this gives 4 evenly divided marks. With the jaws aligned like an "+", I put the level on a horizontal jaw. Repeat this and I now have 8 evenly divided marks. For the 12 hole face-plates, I marked 4 holes with the cross-slide and divided each space twice with calipers. The 12 holes are not perfectly symmetrical but work fine.