A couple of dead centres and a live centre are a good start and always useful

Boring bars? make your own

and Welcome to the nuthouse

Edited By Ady1 on 05/04/2020 18:15:22

A dial indicator on a magnetic stand is a must in the early days

You can get one from ebay for less than 20 quid

Agree with Bob a good 4 jaw and clock and perhaps a decent live centre will get you up and running, buy things as you need them and buy the best quality that you can afford. As for steadies, faceplates and clamps don’t bother with them yet, you will most probably only use them once or twice a year, I cannot remember the last time I used my travelling steady, fixed steady was about a year ago and faceplate only seems to be used with Keats angle plate for boring loco cylinders, so about once every eight to ten years!

Homemade centre punches, boring bars, spring centre tap followers, tailstock die holders, and internal grooving tools all are simple, very handy for many years use, and can be made of small bits of scrap mild steel that you or friends nearby may have lying around. Many of these tools can be made from old bolts or threaded rod, although these materials are not as easy to machine as mild steel or free cutting mild steel. Just food for thought.

I agree with all the comments above. Have a cleanup around the shed/house/garage. Anything that has metal parts is ripe for stripping down to make bits & pieces. Printers, lawnmowers. PC cases old garden tools, car parts etc are all fair game. Not all of the metals will be good for machining easily but excellent for practice until this virus has passed and you can get some better quality material. I made a lot of my original accessories from scrap metal of unknown quality. It taught me how to overcome many problems on the lathe and mill. My travelling steady, fixed steady, Face plate, go/no gauges and many parts of my dividing head were made from scrap from many sources.

Good luck Have fun & stay well

regards

edit spelling  also look here for tool tips etc    Journeyman

Edited By Oldiron on 05/04/2020 19:56:38

Edited By Oldiron on 05/04/2020 19:59:38

Sparey's detail tended to be around the most prevalent hobby lathe, at the time, the Myford ML7. Whilst the details may differ, the underlying principles do not.

It is still a good foundation book.

To it, I would add Tubal Cain's "Model Engineers Handbook". This is a splendid reference book on many aspects of model engineering, and a set of Zeus charts.

As time goes on, you will find a use for many of the Workshop Practice series. Buy each one as the need arises. Over the years, I have accumulated a dozen!

When you get into screwcutting, you may find Brian Wood's " Gearing of Lathes for Screwcutting" a useful addition to the library.

You won't be using the books all the time, but they will be an invaluable reference for all sorts of jobs.

As in making or buying tools, the motto is "Slowly, slowly catchee monkey" Otherwise you will end like me at least one purchase that you never ever use! We all learned to walk before we began to run, and only sprinted later on.

Some accessories will be little used, but invaluable for the odd special job.

Howard

fat fingers strike again

Edited By Howard Lewis on 06/04/2020 12:33:48

Edited By Howard Lewis on 06/04/2020 12:34:52

Edited By Howard Lewis on 06/04/2020 13:01:11

One use for the MC bush-type steady would be to get round the problem of the small Myford spindle hole.

Were you thinking of a travelling version of this? Not sure how this would work for repeat cuts.

Hi Jeremy!

It sounds like We are very much at the same place (At the beginning!!), but it sounds like You have done more 'swarf production' than Me!

I bought My first lathe last Year (Super 7), but health problems have prevented Me from getting on with things until now.

The present Lockdown has given Me the opportunity to strip My lathe down to clean it up, and I have started a thread about this ( latest posting just before Yours!), so I am hoping to get properly into turning later in thr Year.

I have built up a collection of 'Workshop Practice Series' books while I was laid up last Year, the first I bought was Number 34, Harold Hall's 'Lathework, A Complete Course' , available for about £6 online, and I found it a very interesting read.

Harold also has a very good Website of His own with lots of projects, and is also known to appear on the Forums here.

In it He covers getting going and also many projects that give a good grounding in producing useful tools for around the workshop, well worth a look!

I hope We have much fun in this great hobby, I'm really looking forward to joining in!

Keep Safe! Cheers, Pete

No EGA – Sorry – just put it down to old age.

I got my 'steadies' mixed up when typing – the MC bearing-steady is a fixed steady – the other thingy (guide-cum-cutter) is obviously of the moving kind. And yes, the MC type is very handy to (for example) centre drill stock that won't fit through the headstock. As Martin Cleeve explained – you can also use it to mill on 'light' lathes – with less chatter using a bearing-supported holder – without needing to touch (tighten up) the headstock bearings. I know everyone has a mill these days – but mine are both down the Shed and I don't go there too much in the depths of Winter – so I still do small inside jobs on the EW when needed.

Regards,

IanT

IanT:

MC wrote a number of articles about improvements to the EW. His steady design was updated some years ago and written up in one of the magazines. Here is my version of the latter:

You do need a bush for each size, of course, but the advantage is that in theory at least they need no axial adjustment.

The date stamp on the photo is a reminder of my own age!

Speaking as a relatively newbie, the things i've found most needed are as follows.

Micrometer (digital preferred so you can switch between metric and imperial)

DTI and magnetic stand

Verniers for rough checking (a cheap Lidl set will do)

Dead centre, Half centre, and live centre

HSS tool set, usually around x8 tools, this gets you used to the shape of the tools and their uses,

A bench grinder and oil stone, to grind the set above and hone them, later to go onto freehand grinding your own tools.

Drill set 1-10mm or imperial equivelant to get you started making holes in things, larger holes can be bored to size.

ME taps and dies and correct tapping drills of a size needed for a project, along with holders. I started with Whitworth which was a mistake on my part.

Four Jaw chuck is very helpful!! if a little fustrating to use at first. It does click rather quickly.

Imperial to metric conversion chart, (helps get your head around both sizes)

Slip gauge set to adjust the centre height of your tool, once the pip is gone your there.

As for projects, a tailstock die holder is a very useful tool, which will find use quite often.

To start out, practice turning a piece of bar to a set diameter. The more swarf you make the more you learn until eventually it clicks what you need to do. removing half the required amount of material. This also gets you used to turning and what your machine tells you as it machines. Vary the depth of cut when the lathe sounds like its groaning, back off. Look at the finish your getting, HSS tools vary greatly on how they cut and they perform different. Deeper cuts make for quite a lot of spring on material if its unsupported. So a final pass on the material at the same setting can relieve that spring for a parallel bar.

Importantly as mentioned already, think ahead at what you want to build, list the tools required to build it and aquire just those tools per project, quite a lot of the time very clean fully equipped home workshops see little use, The messy ones are where a lot of things seem to get built.

Lastly remember to stay safe at all times, safety specs on as soon as you enter the workshop, roll those sleeves up, it will become habbit, make a hook for your chuck key, if its not there don't start your lathe!

Jeremy, as a beginner myself, I did buy several items not yet used, but as a basic list, I would say a set of HSS lathe tools, likewise twist drills in at least 0.5 mm increments up to 10mm. a tailpiece chuck and a bench grinder. I find that in the few years since I began, knowing little, these are the items I have used the most.