small wood lathe - help please.

[monkeymark]

Hi all,

I've been offered a small bench top lathe. It's an old one thats powered by a drill.

It's cheap so I may get it but here's the question;

The drill is old and single speed. I'll either swap with a speed controllable drill or another option would be to mount the whole lot on a board and use a motor from a washing machine and have it belt driven to give extra torque and maybe finer control.

What do those with experience think of that? And what would be required to control the speed of a common washer motor?

All input welcome, Many thanks, Mark

 

[BrokenBiker]

afaik you want speed rather than torque on a wood lathe. My father used to have one of the ones you are talking about and bought a cheap 600w drill to keep on it. Worked well

 

[rtbcomp]

Washing machine motors can be controlled with PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) or simple thyristor controllers, of the type you used to be able to get to control electric drills.

You could try shunt wiring it and running it off a car battery.

They are normally series wired and rev at 15,000 to 20,000 rpm when connected to the mains.

 

[TechnicAl]

I use a wood lathe and I rarely change the speed

 

[Hitch]

Mine has three speeds, 450, 950, 2000.

The slowest for roughing, and the fastest for small spindle work like pens. The slower speeds are better suited to drilling and sanding also.

I'd prefer a few more speeds, don't think I'd manage with a single speed.

 

[Rig Pig]

Has it got a proper spindle or is the drill being used as the head stock? If it has a spindle then you can fit a v belt drive to any small electric motor, the slower running the motor the easier the conversion I would think. A washing machine motor is not enclosed and would have to be placed strategically to avoid chips and dust. A small conventional 240v s/hand from the usual sources would be ideal. You can buy stepped pulleys if you want to vary speed simply - bearing boys web site is a good source of bits.

 

[ibrooks]

Our two large wood lathes have speed controllers on them and it does make life so much easier when you start out with something fairly out of balance and can just turn the speed up as it gets closer to true.

We've got a dinky little bench top one too which is powered by the same sort of motor as a drill but built into the frame so I'd suggest a variable speed drill should be fine but..... A drill isn't really designed to be run constantly for the sort of periods of time that a wood lathe will want to be running for. OK if it's only a small piece that's being turned it won't take as long as some of the bigger stuff we do but I'd still be watching the temperature of the drill motor and maybe even installing it with an eye to some sort of supplementary cooling from the word go.

Don't Jaycar sell a kit to turn a single speed drill into a variable speed? Might be worth investigating if it would mean you didn't have to mess around with the existing mounting and whatnot.

Iain

 

[rosinante]

Hi, I have been turning wood since 1980,the first thing you will discover is that your first lathe esp a drill powered one will be outgrown in a very short time,shop about and buy the biggest one you can fit in your space and that the budget will allow,in an ideal world a variable speed would be best but failing that a pulley speed system is most common,a live centre in the tailstock is also a very good idea to stop pfaffing with wax and burning etc,the more robust the lathe the more stable and pleasurable it is to use,this is a slippery slope so when you have the basics learn to use them well and hide your wallet before you empty it!!
HTH
Chris

 

[monkeymark]

Thanks for all the replies.

I beleive the drill itself is the chuck.

To be honest I have no idea about lathes or even what I'd use it for. But I do like the idea of learning and at the princely sum of £10 its got to be worth a try.

 

[BrokenBiker]

a performance power 700watt drill would be good to use on it, adjustable speed (13 setting iirc) and a button to hold trigger in. Bit noisy though. I have a slightly battered one that i plan on canibalising soon to use the motor and gear box for something else