Mini-Lathe Tools and Projects for Home Machists from Fox Chapel is a must-have resource for mini-lathe owners to fully understand everything this little machine can do. In continuation with its introductory manual, Mini-Lathe for Home Machinists, this book presents a series of projects to extend the versatility of small metal lathes. With detailed explanations, full-color photography, and insightful diagrams and illustrations, author David Fenner provides practical tools and modifications to help you get the most from your mini-lathe, from radius turning attachments to taper turning. 120 pages Shipping / Billing Information This product ships direct from the manufacturer: Your order will ship in approximately 5 business days. This product is considered special order. Your account will be charged when you place your order. Express or overnight shipping is not available for this product. Ships by Ground to the 48 contiguous states. Cannot ship to Alaska, Hawaii, PO Boxes, APOs, US Territories, Canada or other foreign countries. Return Information Contact Woodcraft Supply customer service @ 1-800-535-4482 for return details. After 30 days, you will be charged a 25% restock fee. Customer pays return freight. When returning product, please include the invoice number or customer number and refer to the back of the invoice for shipping instructions. If purchased at a Woodcraft Store, please return the item directly to the store where your purchase was made. Warranty Information For damaged/defective shipments, contact Fox Chapel’s customer service @ 717-560-4703 ext. 42.

If you own a mini-lathe, this book is a must-have resource to fully understand everything this little machine can do! In continuation with its introductory manual, Mini-Lathe for Home Machinists, this book presents a series of projects to extend the versatility of small metal lathes. With detailed explanations, full-color photography, and insightful diagrams and illustrations, author David Fenner provides practical tools and modifications to help you get the most from your mini-lathe. From improving radius turning attachments and strategies for saddle adjustments to techniques for taper turning and knurling, the projects and concepts described in this book can also be applied to various small model engineering lathes and scaled to suit other equipment.

Explore the 15+ Easy & creative metal lathe projects Ideas that you must try. Below we will also discuss in what is a lathe machine? & how it works

Discover 15 manual tools CNC machinists won't need. Learn how CNC technology streamlines your workshop and makes certain traditional tools obsolete.

User made tools, WW lathe tools, Watchmakers lathe, Mowrer lathe tools, Lathe chucks, custom lathe chucks

Tailstock die holder, watchmakers lathe threading accessory, mowrer ww lathe tools, metal lathe threading die holder

Discover 15 manual tools CNC machinists won't need. Learn how CNC technology streamlines your workshop and makes certain traditional tools obsolete.

Here is the method I use to set up my QCTP on the lathe to make the least amount of set up on the tools I use the most. I set the compound at 29...

When my brother Stan fell ill, all my projects came to a halt. However, Stan would not want me to stop. While I'll never again use the lathe and mill to help him with his model railroad, there will be other projects. Therefore I have picked up where I left off, and am in the process of adding digital readouts to my Mini Lathe. Already heavily modified - see my Feb 18, 2010 post - the DRO will enhance it further. Adding the scales to the lathe was more difficult than the Mini Mill because there was a lot less room to work with. The cross-slide scale just barely fit by laying it flat on it's back. It blocks the gib adjustment screws, but is easily removable should they need adjusting. The compound was even more difficult, as the compound is even smaller. I decided that I could make a housing for the scale that was larger than the compound itself, but not be in the way. In fact, the compound scale is exactly the same length as the cross-slide scale. Like most of my other scales, it is a cut-down Harbor Freight or similar digital caliper. The picture below shows the remains of the caliper, the cross-slide brackets, and the completed compound scale. It extends past the compound slide in both directions, but does not interfere with the hand crank or the toolholder. Like the cross-slide scale, it has to be removed to adjust the gibs, but removing only takes a few minutes. Next task is adding a scale to measure carriage travel. This will use a 12" long caliper and be mounted below the carriage, on the lathe table. After a lot of thought about how to best add the carriage scale, I designed the mounts seen below. They fit snugly underneath the lathe bed, and use a pair of 8-32 screws to secure them in place. After machining them, I hand-filed them in spots to make them conform to some irregular spots in the sand-cast bed. Pictures of the brackets installed. They fit nicely, and accurately hold the scale beam in alignment with the lathe bed. Picture of the scale beam installed: Next step: Make a bracket to connect the scale head to the carriage. This led me down a different path for a while, for when I disassembled the carriage, I saw the need for several improvements. One of the "problems" with these lathes (and mills) is that they offer many opportunities to improve them, and turn an OK machine into a very good machine. For example, in the above picture, the half-nut dovetail can be seen protruding far below the carriage. I decided to fix this and make other improvements, which I will post separately. Then I will return to the scales. See http://robertsprojects.blogspot.com/2011/02/more-mini-lathe-improvements.html for the rest of the story

Hi friends. So I've gotten terribly tired of dull bits and tools. If you're doing any work at all, you end up buying and endless sea of drills to replace the dull or broken ones and the same is true of milling bits of all sorts. To compound the troubles, no one grinds tools and bits for brass so the all-purpose grind is grabby and even dangerous at times. Tool grinding attachment for watchmakers lathe Net/net, I started looking at getting a used tool grinder and quickly came to the conclusion that they were incredibly expensive, even used. Well, after thinking through making one and all the various axis I'd need to be able to accurately pivot or advance the tool along, it dawned on me that the cross slide for the watchmakers lathe with the milling attachment already did most all of that! All the whole setup needed was a way to accurately index the bit held in the standard collets!! I had already made a custom collet to hold the grinding wheel so off I went to design and make the additional bits to convert the milling attachment to an indexing tool. Here's the sum total of all the parts I needed to make. elements of tool grinding attachment Completed parts for tool grinding attachment for watchmakers lathe And what the assembly looks like mounted on the machining spindle. Mounted tool grinding attachment To get started I needed to make the body shell that would fit over the spindle frame. This would have to include a spring loaded drop pin for indexing the spindle as well as a spindle lock Facing the round stock held in steady rest center drill the round stock to start the drilling and boring Drilling the bore Opening up the detente end of the casing Next would come the indexing collar. I made this from an internal bit of 12L14 steel I had leftover from another project and a bit of brass round stock. I machined the inner steel wear collar to size and press fit it into the brass collar after using my indexing wheel and the aux machining spindle to put 4 evenly spaced recesses in the collar for the drop pin to locate on. drilling indexing detentes into spindle collar The outer brass collar would carry the indexing marks which I cut into the brass using a sideways V-ground cutting bit held in the cross slide. Using a travel stop I was able to very accurately engrave the little lines in the collar by keeping the bit super sharp and advancing the cut 5 thousands into the surface per pass. There's just something beautiful about indexing marks on a good tool. Engraving indexing lines on the watchmakers lathe After making the drop pin and the spindle lock lever I could hardly wait to get sharpening. Apologies, I forgot to take photos of this part but it's fairly straight forward. A lever with a screw and a spring loaded pin just like the one I made for the indexing tool elsewhere on this blog. As an aside, the black knob on the draw bar was designed and 3D printed and pressed onto the draw bar. I love the feel of it and it's absolutely concentric. My most pressing need was to sharpen my milling bits both dovetail and standard. I mounted the works and started on the dovetail. It all went smashingly well! Set up for grinding a dovetail cutter Proper angle for grinding a dovetail cutter Grinding a dovetail cutter on the watchmakers lathe That is until I discovered just a small amount of play in the fit of the dovetail into the collet! After measuring the sharpened bit I decided that the small bit of off center grind this imparted was not acceptable. I needed to make my own collet to hold the tools so I decided on brass because the pressures are extremely low with virtually no chance of sudden impact. Shaping the collet blank After shaping the collet I used the threading attachment I made (coming next on a post) to cut the proper threads. This was by far the most satisfying part of the project. no wobble, no flexing, just incredibly sharp and accurate threads!! Using threading attachment for brass custom collet I then drilled and tapped the holes for 4 set screws even though the fit was very snug. Taking no chances and wanted complete adjustability. I even chucked up each bit in the collet and used a dial indicator to insure perfect concentricity before grinding. threading brass custom collet drilling set screw holes in collet adjusting cutter to perfect center in collet A half a day of sharpening 2 dozen dull bits later and I could not be more pleased!! Grinding a four flute mill cutter Grinding a jewelers number drill It works stunningly well on putting a four facet point on the tiniest of drills as well. Boy I had to study up a lot on angles and drill theory. Still quite the newbie but the drills are working well and now I'm setting aside a day to grind an entire number drill set to just do Brass and one for Ferrous metals. Sharp tools!! Four face grind on small drill Enjoy, Kevin