I Wanna Build Something

[John Hart]

Yeah...that would be great Ken! Me likes pictures.

[Loy Hawes]

This guy has a custom lathe.

http://www.got.net/~burly/index.html

Maybe you can contact him and pick his brain.

Great project John. I am looking forward to the end result.

[Ben Grunow]

Off the wall advise here.

A friend of mine had a wood splitter that he made that ran on a leather belt driven by a pulley on a PTO on his tractor (his son told me this so not sure if it is fully true but worth hearing if you are considering assembling some kind of machinery yourself). He could apparently drive his tractor to the splitter (at remote shed in woods) and loop the belt over the pulleys and start splitting fire wood. Well the belt tore one day and whipped hime right in the face knocking him out and leaving him with a bruise that made the entire left side of his face black with green trim (I did see this part but didnt ask).

So, put a shroud on any belts.

[Don Orr]

Hey John, Sounds like a cool project to me. A couple suggestions. Do a search for Moulthrop ( I think Ed for first name or son Phil) and see if you can find the homemade lathe they made many years ago. Very interesting design and worked very well. There was a write up in FWW if I remember correctly a long time ago. A guy up here in way-northern NY state built a lathe and used a truck transmission which supposedly gives him 12 speeds forward and 4 reverse. I've seen his work several times and it is BIG. On the order of 30" or more! I'll see if I can find his info at home.

Good luck, have fun and keep us posted.

[John Hart]

Thanks for the leads guys! I'll definitely check them out. Thanks for the advice Ben. Yep...I fully intend on making this a safe machine. Belts scare me to death. (arm eaters).

I'm also thinking that I can give it long ways....maybe 15 feet. The channel through the shop is perfectly square and I should be able to mount steel to it. That should provide a stable platform for a beefy tailstock. I would like to turn some pillars.

[Kenneth Hertzog]

Hi John
I'm going to try and post pictures

who knows it just might work

ken

just tried for another 2 hours and still no pictures

biglathe3.JPG biglathe1.JPGbiglathe2.JPG

Just a note A BIG THANK YOU TO NANCY LAIRD for the pic help

[Jeff Borges]

what a fun idea!!!
just a brief laymans explanation of concrete. 5 or 6 bag mix defines its strength. an engineer would define it by psi strength. more bags = harder concrete. As for vibration and degrading, think of all the concrete freeways, they do quite well.. (with a high PSI mix, something in the neighborhood of 3500-4500). Most of the degrading comes from freeze/thaw cycles, but if your concrete is indoors.. I would think thats not an issue. I agree the vibration damping would be wonderful, using the earth as your base..no more ballast boxes!!

I am eager to see where this goes.. what a fun idea.

[John Hart]

Thanks for the pictures Ken! That really gives me some fundamental structural ideas. This morning, I'm going to go clean out the shop and get some good pictures of where this this needs to go. I'll post them later (unless dinner stops me) The concrete channel that held the underfloor pulley system should be able to accomodate the entire machine. We have tons of scrap steel at work that I can just throw on the truck, so I should have plenty of materials, and I'm really liking the concrete idea.


Jeff...Do you think I should mount everything to shock absorbers...or just directly to the concrete?

[Gary DeWitt]

A few thoughts I can contribute:
There was a guy a few years back, built a large swing bowl lathe out of mostly large angle iron, I beam, and large pillow blocks, 2" IIRC, who spent nearly a year building, only to say when it was all done that the amount of effort cost more than a store-bought, but the satisfaction was greater.
There is a turner in south america with a homebuilt that uses recycled railroad track for the ways!
I've seen large printing presses installed, where several units bolt together and must be level within .001 of each other and must not vibrate much more than that so the printed colors register with each other. When Heidelberg sets one of these beasts up, they have their customer install a concrete base, FOUR FEET DEEP (THICK) with lots of rebar, and the size of the press, about 10' wide and 100+' long. An impressive amount of stabilization! The press units are bolted down to the concrete, bolts welded to the rebar and poured right into the pad, with no dampeners of any kind. Just bolted directly down, as no vibration is desired.
For your spindle, I'm wondering if there is some other macinery that could be recycled/adapted. There are surplus and salvage yards out there with some of the most amazing stuff, if you can get to it with a cutting torch and perhaps buy it by the pound.
Also, what about using a car engine crank and bearings? A small 4 cyl might work, with the rest of the works removed, or just the crank and bearings mounted in a headstock welded up out of thick sheet steel...
You don't really need a morse taper in the HS, as long as you can get a chuck attached you could use those drive centers that fit a chuck.
Here's a link to an AAW forum thread with some interesting ideas, including where to get a spindle:
http://www.woodturner.org/vbforum/sh...homemade+lathe
This was from a search of their forums for "big homemade lathe", there are other articles of interest there too.

In the end, I think you could be quite successful with this, especially if you enjoy metal work as much as you do wood turning.
Good luck, and keep us posted!

[Jeff Borges]

As for shock absorbers, a rubber (thick and hard) or urethane donut would probably help with the beginnings of a big hunk of off balance wood.

It seems to mee that vibration is only a short term issue for two reasons: first, you should be turning anything big at a fairly slow RPM anyhow until its reasonably balanced, and second, most of the "time" spent turing is refining that balanced chunk, right? Just a thought.

Also, having the headstock on dampeners, might allow for simple adjusting when using your long ways (centering to the tailstock).


Remember to take lots of pics and video, this would be great on You Tube too!

[John Hart]

Well..I finally got the shop cleaned yesterday. The place was a mess before we moved in and then I made it a bigger mess while we were moving. So yesterday, I pulled up the tractor and loaded it up with all the junk, started a burn pile, and got the place swept out. Now there's nothing but tools. I'll take some pics this morning to show you the channel that I have to work with and where this monster will go.

Railroad tracks???? Thats Cool Gary!!! Ya know..that would be perfect. They could be mounted right in the channel.

Sounds like the shock absorbers are probably not necessary. I hope to have a preliminary design to bounce off everyone later this weekend.

[John Hart]

Ok...here's the channel in question. The last owner covered it with boards to keep from falling in and had his main pulley shaft running the length of this channel.
0channel4.jpg
He told me that I could have the main shaft but I knew he wanted it for his new house...so I gave it up.

Up against the wall is where the engine shaft comes through. I just need to install a short shaft on pillow blocks with a pulley to drive the lathe.
0channel3.jpg
0channel2.jpg
0channel1.jpg

[Kenneth Hertzog]

John
For the lathe that we built the shaft came from Bailey's. You give them the size you want the they will thread the end for what ever you need and they also have the pillow blocks
hope that helps
ken
slippery rock, pa

[Ken Garlock]

Back in 1981, 2 years after moving to Plano TX, I installed a 50 ft. self supporting ham radio tower. The tower builder, Rhone, called for a base 5.5 ft. deep and nearly 6ft. square. That was 6.6 cubic yards, and nearly 24,000 lbs of concrete. The base also required a network of #3 re-bar. The hole took me most of the summer to dig it. ( I went to college to avoid this cheap physical stuff. ) There were also three 4 ft. long legs that were install in the base. I let the concrete cure over 30 days before attempting to raise the tower....

When we moved up to the 'farm', I had the tower disassembled and trashed. But my point of this story is that that base was as good as the day it was poured, not so much as a hint of a crack. The tower was up, with some sizable antennas at the top, for 10 years with the tower continually torquing the base, even though some notable Texas spring thunderstorms. Yes, that was a lot of concrete, but it served its purpose very, very well.

Lesson learned: If you use enough concrete it will not budge. Let the concrete cure for at least 30 days, the more the better, and it will not disintegrate. ( humm, isn't disintegrate a differential?) Find out what the highway department uses for a concrete mix, that would be a good starting place.

Don't forget to install some BABs, Big xxx Bolts, in the wet concrete. Stop at the hardware store in Kidron, and get some one inch #6 by as long as you can get bolts. Then cut a chunk of 1/4' steel plate 3 or 4 inches square, drill a hole for the bolt, and drop the steel "washer" down to the head of the bolt. When installed, the only the bolt threads should remain out of the concrete.

Sounds like you have a fun project on the horizon.

[Andrew Harkin]

Are you thinking of a direct drive for the lathe only, or something like the old overhead belt systems in older shops? I grew up working in my dad's old shop that had a pretty massive overhead belt system, and the remainder of the shop is still running with overheads at it's new location. It still has a enormous metal lathe and large grinder running off it.

If you're thinking that, I could take some pictures of specific parts, specifically how you change gears on the lathe.