lathes and table legs

[Old Git]

Second that.

[Andy Dingley]

Clarke's little yellow metalworking lathe is OK, but oddly their other lathes do seem poor. I'm also unimpressed by their corded power tools

- it's a competitive market and their offerings aren't too good.

Otherwise I have a _lot_ of Clarke kit (mostly hydraulic) and don't manage to break much of it.

As to the woodturning lathe, then I don't see a =A3100 lathe as being such a good deal as a =A3200 lathe, when you can easily spend =A3100 on tooling, then =A3100 on a scroll chuck (as a "typical" starting point for a middle class hobbyist).

You don't need a =A3400+ wood lathe to start on, but you do need more than that =A3100 Clarke, unless you're never planning to turn much more than a candlestick.

[Fred]

Thanks. Both of you think the Clarke lathe is ok. Are you, like Andy suggested, only using it to turn wood that is already rounded?

There seem to be some posters who think these are good lathes and some who think not, so perhaps it is horses for courses. I guess it is best to try before you buy if possible.

As someone said early in this thread it is not economical to buy a lathe just to make a couple of table legs, so I won't be buying anything just yet. I will look into courses, books, and videos. I did get a couple of books from Amazon but they turned out to be for metalworking lathes! I always wondered what they were for and now I read you can make your own screw threads.

When the time comes, I will also look at the Axminster. Thanks for all your help.

[Andy Dingley]

I mis-worded that. The problem isn't with turning non-cylindrical billets, the Clarke will happily turn a sawn square into a table leg. Whether it's round or not to start with isn't a problem, you just have an interrupted cut for a short while (this is why roughing gouges are such big hulking things).

The problem is when you're turning something unbalanced, such as a banana, or a quartered log. As it rotates, the off-balance force throws your lathe around something fierce, until you start to get it under control (usually by turning a cylinder out of the middle of it). To deal with this sort of rough billet you need a lathe that's adequately rigid, and that gives you easy speed control down to quite a low speed. On the Axminster you just turn a handle, on the Clarke you have to stop and shift belts.

For some big bowl blanks, I've even been reduced to crawling the lathe around slowly, whilst I took the high spots off the blank with an Arbortech disk in an angle grinder. Thanks to Marc Brunel for the inspiration on that one...

[Fred]

You many not had misworded it, it may be that I misunderstood!

Thanks for he explanation. I had naively assumed people bought squares of rough sawn wood. I hadn't thought about cutting out the middle man and chopping a tree down and using the branch direct, rather than go to the timber merchant!

If you have a banana shaped branch, isn't it best to saw it squarer before putting it in the lathe?

The handle sounds like a good feature on the Axminster.

Thanks again.

[Andy Dingley]

There are two sorts of imbalance: bananas and wedges.

Bananas are logs that are basically circular, but curved. They can be seriously out of balance, and they're unpredictable. It takes a very practiced eye to see just what's obtainable from inside such a log, so the easiest way is often to mount it up in the lathe and take a quick skim. Very often you'll re-adjust the centre position, as you see how your best cylinder actually fits inside it. For sawing it lengthways to remove the lumps, the lathe is actually a better tool - especially as it's pretty much self-guiding for where to cut. If you do cut, it's usually to chop the length. Two shorter logs, of equal curvature radius, give a more useful middle.

Wedges are made by splitting a big log into quarters. This also avoids the central pith, which is often a good idea for stability. Historically such a billet would then be held in a shave horse and shaved round with a drawknife (traditional work for a bodger) before being turned in a semi-rotary pole lathe. As a drawknife along the grain removes wood with less effort than a pole lathe and gouge across the grain, that's worth the effort. With a motorised lathe, I can just be lazy. The off-balance from a wedge billet is generally small and predictable, so it's no big deal.

Then there are rough bowl blanks. The size of the biggest bowl you can turn is generally limited by your fear level when first roughing it. This is why smaller, but massively constructed, cast iron lathes of the '50s & '60s like Unions and Graduates are still so popular, especially for bowls.

It has two good features: a solid cast iron bed, also the variable speed drive. These are well worth the increment from =A3100 to =A3200. You also get a floor stand, which you'd have to provide somehow anyway.

[Fred]

Thanks for all the advice. I'm waiting for the books that were recommended earlier in the thread to arrive from Amazon.