What do you use your lathe for?

[Blue HeelerParticipant @blueheeler]

What's the main thing you use your lathe for?

Mine is for my model and toy steam engine hobby/addiction.

[Blue HeelerParticipant @blueheeler]

[magpieParticipant @magpie]

Turning things.

[Thor 🇳🇴Participant @thor]

I too use my lathe primarily for making model steam engines and tools for my machines.

Thor

[colin branniganParticipant @colinbrannigan54160]

My Myford is used for making parts or the tooling to make the parts for the motorcycles I rebuild, it may get used for other thinks when I am too old to ride.

Colin

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

I make/repair parts for my Lister engines I restore, make new parts for friends and repair anything else thats broken.

Martin P

[Chris Evans 6Participant @chrisevans6]

As Colin above, I use my lathe for making motorcycle parts and tooling. I also help a mate out when he is repairing ground keeping equipment for the local football club. Seem to do more bits for other peoples bikes than my own, with a lathe and Bridgeport mill you get a lot of friends.

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

Self education by experimentation!

Peter G. Shaw

[larry phelan 1Participant @larryphelan1]

I,m with Peter Shaw on this one, and like Magpie, for turning things and cutting threads ,boring ect ,ect in fact for loads of things.

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

I make engineering models, toys, wooden and delrin parts for salt/pepper grinders, batts for the missus' pottery wheel, keyring fobs, metal lightswitch pulls, pendants, and various parts as a volunteer for the local steam railway, such as brass or bronze pipe unions and cones in 'obsolete' sizes, bleed screws with titchy holes in them, steel suspension bushes for locos, refurb bits for various complicated valves – in fact anything that'll fit on my lathe that they can reasonably trust a volunteer to do – whenever they ask.

You'll see most of the range in my album.

It's in use somehow or other most days.

Edited By Mick B1 on 03/07/2019 10:03:52

[Former MemberParticipant @formermember19781]

[This posting has been removed]

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, my initial answer when I read the title was exactly the same as Magpie's post. However they all get used for anything and every thing that needs turning. Today for instance, I will be finishing off another bush made from a piece of water pipe, to fit in a new hinge for my sisters shed door. These hinges are meant for a larger pin really, but I don't have any pins for them and anyway her pins are both OK and would make more work than needed to replace them.

Regards Nick.

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Plus I just made a new 4,3mm shaft for the little nylon wheel that supports the RH runner in our big kitchen drawer, 'cos the original pin just broke – thus saving about a day's frustrating work trying to find, buy and fit a new runner of the right size and type…

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Next job on the list is to repair a set of Highland Bag Pipes. I have not been working on my hot air motors of late, but I have an open crank IC motor that I should get finished to see if it will go, it only needs the ignition coil wired up, the timing sorted out.

The big V pulley is to drive an old computer cooling fan, hoping it will as well as cooling the motor will work as an alternator, possibly enough to operate the ignition, I need at least 3V.

Ian S C

           

Edited By Ian S C on 03/07/2019 11:28:21

Edited By Ian S C on 03/07/2019 11:33:54

[bill ellisParticipant @billellis45274]

Usually repairing things that were originally plastic and are now metal (or sometimes a machinable plastic). I prefer repairing things to building stuff from scratch but that is about to change as I have decided to build a stationary engine from castings (not decided on specific model yet). Over the years I recon my lathe & mill will have saved thousands in fixing things rather than buying new ones (even the things that are allegedly non fixable).

I think the main thing a lathe does is give you a sense of satisfaction and that of being capable to not rely on availability of bits for repair.

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Posted by 34046 on 03/07/2019 10:24:20:

Posted by magpie on 03/07/2019 08:10:44:

Turning things.

Good answer and plus 1 from me.

Bill

+ one more, here. Perhaps I am lucky that I don’t need to use it as a milling machine?

[Grizzly bearParticipant @grizzlybear]

Some good and interesting answers.

Me, maintenance, all things indoors and outdoors.

Most recent, lawnmower and garden shredder.

Making mechanical parts for the electronics hobby.

Enjoy working with acetal & similar.

Thread turning is very rewarding and therapeutic.

If you are having a bad day, a burst of the lathe is a tonic.

Bear..

[Anonymous]

Posted by Blue Heeler on 03/07/2019 08:08:07:

What's the main thing you use your lathe for?

Varies according to which one.

Andrew

[Former MemberParticipant @formermember19781]

[This posting has been removed]

[Bob StevensonParticipant @bobstevenson13909]

I 'only' make clocks,….but while I have been making them I have also used the lathes to make clock-making tools, target airpistol parts, specific piping components, parts for brass musical instruments, a long list of camera parts including prototype technical camera, parts for two-stroke engines, and…….a set of small plastic wheels for a shower enclosure after the manufacturers washed their hands of parts or moral duty……if i scratch my head there's a lot more besides!

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by 34046 on 03/07/2019 15:27:59:

I do more woodturning on my metal lathe than I do on the wood lathe.

Bill

That happened to me too. Eventually I realised that I could do everything that I could on the wood lathe on the metal lathe too; and the wood lathe had been a pointless sidetrack. It went.

[ANDY CAWLEYParticipant @andycawley24921]

Making bits for my vintage motor cars, mainly Frazer Nash or GN .

[Jeff DaymanParticipant @jeffdayman43397]

GN, the cyclecars from the 1920's era?

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Mainly model-engineering and related (I'm presently making a Worden tool-grinder – a Hemingway kit).

Of the ones-off and "specials" – years ago:

– New king-pin bushes for Bedford CA vans I owned then,

– A set of small brass bushes for one of the CAs, to take out the wear in the rod-and-clip throttle linkage that was so bad it lost a third of the motion between accelerator pedal and carburettor..

– An adaptor in snazzy black plastic plate to hold a new shower mixer-valve on the previous unit's existing holes in the tiled stud-wall,

– A stand off, in Nylon, to take the shower head further out from the wall, necessitated by the bath end being a few inches from the wall,

– Perhaps the most awkward, a special connector for a pub trade CO2 bottle, being principally a short brass rod drilled though, with a very non-standard metric thread on the outside and a pin silver-soldered through as a handle. That on a 2.5" BGSC EW Stringer lathe with determinedly inch lead-screw and 25 to 65 T X 5T change-wheels – and of course no die or chaser to finish the thread to profile. It was for a heat-exchanger central to a warm-air breathing kit used by a cave rescue organisation to ward off hypothermia in the rescuee. The heat source is the exothermic reaction between the CO2 and soda-lime.

– Assorted parts for the spoilt-raising, manual winch for a cave "digging" project on Mendip, in which I am involved when not having knees replaced. It's essentially a simple rope-reel running on plastic bearing bushes on a fixed scaffold-pole axle, and I made the two side-frames from scrap miniature-railway bar rail. ("Digging": the signs are there that a cave is down there somewhere, but its entrance is obstructed by a very deep mass of boulders we are carefully and patiently negotiating and stabilising our way through. Some 150 feet deep and still going down…)

– Oh and when I've a few minutes to spare, my steam-wagon far too long in the making!

[Blue HeelerParticipant @blueheeler]

Cheers for the replies all.

[Author]

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