What can you with a lathe?

Hey, I haven't tried that one yet. Thanks for the tip!

-- Jack Novak Buffalo, NY - USA (Remove "SPAM" from email address to reply)

Reply to
Nova
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Now THAT'S the best one I"ve heard yet!

Reply to
The Davenports

There's lots to do - bowls, plates, spindles, chair legs and so on.

It sounds like you want the lathe to produce a whole project. That it can do, limited only by what you think up.

If you're at all interested in chairmaking, you'll need one to make chair parts. This is where it's a lieutenant in the process of making something, like a jointer. You have a jointer, right? Yet the jointer itself does make a finished item, it is something that's used in the process. So it can be with a lathe.

Reply to
Lazarus Long

Even odds that if you make her the rolling pin you wear it for buying the lathe without asking first. Making something she can hit you with just doesn't seem smart.

Tim Douglass

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Reply to
Tim Douglass

As you can sense from the responses so far, most of us don't NEED a lathe. If we walked around our shop and had to pick the tool that is the most fun to use, we, who have them, would most likely pick the lathe.

While there are some weekend square projects, most of them take longer than that. With a lathe, from start to finished (that includes finish) is measured in minutes to hours. Some projects are useless, like the mushrooms mentioned. We call them "art" or "craft" depending on whether you have your lathe in a shop or studio :)

Some people buy a lathe as an extension of their love of wood and woodworking. Some find it so fascinating that they quit building square stuff. Many, as noted in the responses, will use it occasionally as therapy.

How do you justify that you need it? You don't. You want it. If you smoked a pack a day at $2 a pack (don't know what the price is, but this works for here,) you'd burn up $730 in a year. If you smoke, quit, and you have your budget. Then you'll have to worry about the dust in your lungs.

For a $730 budget I'd buy:

A used lathe or a Jet Mini with extension. ~$250 The $29.99 set of HSS turning tools from HF ~$40 A good quality 1/2 inch bowl gouge ~$50 A Talon chuck for the mini lathe or Stronghold for a full size lathe ~$200 Pen kits, book, wood. ~$60 That leaves $130 for some roses and a bauble for SWMBO. Or maybe a nice dinner out.

Gene

Reply to
Gene

Dont own a lathe yet so my most fun stuff is the bandsaw and my crappy Stanley spokeshave.

TomL

Reply to
TomL

Pens, christmas tree ornaments, yo-yo's, pepper mills, laser pointers, ...... just get a Woodcraft or Rockler catalog and look under lathe and get lots of ideas for small kit type lathe projects. Then consider bowls, plates, chess sets, turned boxes, and things of this nature that are stand alone lathe projects not needing kits. Lastly think knobs, legs, rails and other parts to go into bigger non-lathe projects. I guess some people make their own "Wonder Boy" baseball bats, but that will be about the last thing I will be making with my lathe (if I ever learn how to turn and sharpen well enough that I can honestly say that sandpaper is no longer my most important lathe tool;)

Dave Hall

Reply to
David Hall

Damn, when did those $29.99 sets go down to only $40 ;)

Dave Hall

Reply to
David Hall

Good point. Don't build any weapons for a week or two.

Reply to
Larry C

Make pens with a Vertilathe.

George

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Reply to
George Devine

One thing you can do with a lathe is transport yourself into a world far, far away from nagging mates, fighting kids, etc.

Lathing is fun.

Reply to
C

I ain't gonna give up a chainsaw, but you've got a box of blanks headed you way. Try turning some of that pine you've got lying around, and any poplar that you can find.

Dave in Fairfax

Reply to
dave

Having a lathe is like entering a time machine. Start using it and you think an hour goes by, but really it was the entire day passes by. Very addicting machine, and I think it is one of the oldest woodworking machines. Justify it as a gift, rather than a necessity, just to keep out of the doghouse.

Reply to
Phisherman

Not useless. Tie a couple of them to a string and you have a bola. Put one on your desk and you have a paperweight. Put a bunch of them in a bag, and you have a weapon almost as good as a sack of doorknobs.

Reply to
Silvan

I wonder how much wood I could get into a backpack? I know a place with a lot of deadfall that isn't on National Forest land, so I could remove the wood without going to prison, but it can't be reached by any sort of vehicle.

Take a helluva long time to get a tree out one backpack at a time, wouldn't it? :)

I'll have to go see what the wood actually is, to decide if any of it is worth thinking about that kind of effort. It's a six mile hike to the wood and back.

It fell a few years ago, so it won't be green. It might be spalted though. Might be walnut or something for all I know.

Could be good for my assal fattalitis.

Reply to
Silvan

I make bunches of the silly things- I've got four or five on the desk, and another small forest of them in the basement. I collect wood from our Scout Reservation summer camp- wonderfully spalted Silver Birch, red pine, oak, maple- and give them as gifts to the staff. When I get a nice batch of donated greenwood from friends or neighbors I'll quick-turn a shroom or two from the same wood as a 'thank you'. Faster than a bowl or other item, and the warp of a green-turned shroom can be very "artsy- fartsy".

Reply to
Victor Radin

Because of this irritating thread I went out and bought the cheapest = lathe that HF had. It was the $129 old model but I got if for $79 since = it is discontinued. Anyway so I set it up and having never used a lathe = before I actually read the 3 pages of instructions and off I went. I now = have 7 honey dippers a candle holder and a dice cup. What a hoot. Puff

Reply to
Puff Griffis

Too true. Makes one wish for windows in the shop. Step in at high sun, step out, and it's dark outside. Dark? How did that happen?

Reply to
Silvan
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So be careful if working it, its dust might be rather hazardous to your health.

Reply to
Juergen Hannappel

Fun to play "how much can I peel." I got almost all the way to the center once before the shaving finally broke.

Turned mallets are *awesome*. I had been using a rubber mallet for chisel and other similar work. I had been meaning to buy a real mallet some day, but never got around to it. Now I have two really nice ones, with just the shape I wanted.

They sure are nice to use. I can also beat the living crap out of them, since I can always make more.

Reply to
Silvan

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