Kyle gets the mini lathe home....

Kyle gets the mini lathe home and then what???

btw "Kyle" in this context is just a name for any one of us.

OK you get your mini lathe home then what?
first thing you discover is that it just sits there inert on the
bench.
then you start wondering just how you go about actually making
anything on the lathe. after all it just spins stuff around and you
have to wind the knobs.

it doesnt take long for you to totally disbelieve the comment that the
lathe is the king of tools. (it is btw but only after you know how to
use it)

what you need to do is spend the next few nights in the workshop (oh
it probably isnt one of those yet so you'll just be working in the
shed with all the gardening tools, or in a back room) what you've got
to do is to look at the lathe, play with it a bit, oil it, play with
it a bit more and cogitate.

what you wont realise until later is that you have embarked on a
change in the way you are going to think about everything around you.
instead of looking at a widget as something that you buy in harbour
freight your transformation process will lead you to seeing everything
as assemblies of parts. each part being made from materials by a
sequential set of steps which does the michaelangelo thing to the raw
materials eventually generating swarf, a bin full of mistakes, and
some usable parts.

oh michaelangelo... was once asked how he carved a statue.' I look at
the block of stone and see in my minds eye a statue, then I carve away
everything that isnt the statue.' it really is that simple
....eventually.

when you finally understand the use of your lathe you will find that
you look at something like a pratt and whitney(sp?) radial engine as
just a thousand bits made by sequential processes.
making one just requires you to draw out all the sizes on paper or in
a CAD program to make sure they will all work together, and then pick
the most interesting bit, get the materials together and then work out
which is the first step and most importantly of all, actually get
started.

for a doodle around project as your first bit of machining I might
suggest making yourself 3 little plumb bobs. you need about 8ft of
string on each one.
you can make them quite easily to a better quality than you can buy
them.
once you've made them you hang one off the leading edge of your wing
on each side of the aircraft about a foot out from the side of the
fuselage. run a piece of masking tape acoss the floor between the
plumb bobs then draw an accurate pencil line between the plumb bobs.
that is the datum.
leave one plumb bob in place so you can check that the aircraft hasnt
moved.
you then hang one off the centre of the firewall. you hang the third
one under the tail. masking tape and pencil line between the two plumb
bobs and you have the centreline of the aircraft.
being a resourceful guy I'll let you work out the rest of the details
in redoing your aircraft weight and balance. it isnt hard and doing
the job with 3 plumb bobs you've made yourself is quite neat. :-)

like the zen monk that I am I've told you everything and yet I've told
you nothing.
the process of understanding how to make stuff on your lathe will take
a while. making mistakes is an essential part of the process. be
patient, be persistent and ask questions when you get stuck.

Stealth Pilot (who spent the day making patterns and reconditioning
his casting green sand in readiness for the day of propeller melting
that is coming up soon.)

Stealth Pilot wrote:
Kyle gets the mini lathe home and then what???

btw "Kyle" in this context is just a name for any one of us.

OK you get your mini lathe home then what?
first thing you discover is that it just sits there inert on the
bench.
then you start wondering just how you go about actually making
anything on the lathe. after all it just spins stuff around and you
have to wind the knobs.

it doesnt take long for you to totally disbelieve the comment that the
lathe is the king of tools. (it is btw but only after you know how to
use it)

what you need to do is spend the next few nights in the workshop (oh
it probably isnt one of those yet so you'll just be working in the
shed with all the gardening tools, or in a back room) what you've got
to do is to look at the lathe, play with it a bit, oil it, play with
it a bit more and cogitate.

what you wont realise until later is that you have embarked on a
change in the way you are going to think about everything around you.
instead of looking at a widget as something that you buy in harbour
freight your transformation process will lead you to seeing everything
as assemblies of parts. each part being made from materials by a
sequential set of steps which does the michaelangelo thing to the raw
materials eventually generating swarf, a bin full of mistakes, and
some usable parts.

oh michaelangelo... was once asked how he carved a statue.' I look at
the block of stone and see in my minds eye a statue, then I carve away
everything that isnt the statue.' it really is that simple
...eventually.

when you finally understand the use of your lathe you will find that
you look at something like a pratt and whitney(sp?) radial engine as
just a thousand bits made by sequential processes.
making one just requires you to draw out all the sizes on paper or in
a CAD program to make sure they will all work together, and then pick
the most interesting bit, get the materials together and then work out
which is the first step and most importantly of all, actually get
started.

for a doodle around project as your first bit of machining I might
suggest making yourself 3 little plumb bobs. you need about 8ft of
string on each one.
you can make them quite easily to a better quality than you can buy
them.
once you've made them you hang one off the leading edge of your wing
on each side of the aircraft about a foot out from the side of the
fuselage. run a piece of masking tape acoss the floor between the
plumb bobs then draw an accurate pencil line between the plumb bobs.
that is the datum.
leave one plumb bob in place so you can check that the aircraft hasnt
moved.
you then hang one off the centre of the firewall. you hang the third
one under the tail. masking tape and pencil line between the two plumb
bobs and you have the centreline of the aircraft.
being a resourceful guy I'll let you work out the rest of the details
in redoing your aircraft weight and balance. it isnt hard and doing
the job with 3 plumb bobs you've made yourself is quite neat. :-)

like the zen monk that I am I've told you everything and yet I've told
you nothing.
the process of understanding how to make stuff on your lathe will take
a while. making mistakes is an essential part of the process. be
patient, be persistent and ask questions when you get stuck.

Stealth Pilot (who spent the day making patterns and reconditioning
his casting green sand in readiness for the day of propeller melting
that is coming up soon.)



http://lineymachine.googlepages.com/ and companies like that sell
plans and kits for steam engines. Some are very simple and all can be
built from basic stock without castings. If nothing else they are
confidence building exercises for beginners. Liney assumes you have a
basic understanding how lathe and mills work. There are videos on
youtube that show one how to do basic work. Sherline has a page on how
to sharpen lathe tools.

I do suggest modifying a trash bag to cover the machine when not in
use. If one isn't going to use it for awhile the lathe will serve as a
dust magnet.

One of my pet peeves about many homebuilt aircraft I have seen there
are rows of identical toggle switches. One could make knobs for them
with different shapes to provide tactile cues. It's cheaper than buying
such switches.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

"Dan" wrote

. There are videos on youtube that show one how to do basic work.

Good point! I had never thought of that!

I had unlimited access to a full sized Taiwan knock-off for a while at
school, and nobody knew anything about running it, so I taught myself a few
things. Since the ag teacher that had it in his shop didn't know how to use
it, it went off to surplus sales.

I made a few adapters for some scaffolding, and a few other machine parts,
and got so I was not totally incompetent, but I knew I was incompetent
enough to not want to make anything on it for an airplane! g

I might have to get a small (but not too small) lathe sometime in the next
year or two, and get with someone that can teach me how to properly use it
to make some things my life would depend on. Even some self study books
would go a long way toward learning some good basics, and then go from there
with some more advanced learning.

I could probably get into a machine shop class at the local community
college. They seem to have a pretty good shop, but I don't know anything
about the teacher.

And yes, I could see how you could get hooked, in a hurry!
--
Jim in NC

On Aug 17, 12:21 pm, "Morgans" wrote:
"Dan" wrote

. There are videos on youtube that show one how to do basic work.

Good point! I had never thought of that!

I had unlimited access to a full sized Taiwan knock-off for a while at
school, and nobody knew anything about running it, so I taught myself a few
things. Since the ag teacher that had it in his shop didn't know how to use
it, it went off to surplus sales.

I made a few adapters for some scaffolding, and a few other machine parts,
and got so I was not totally incompetent, but I knew I was incompetent
enough to not want to make anything on it for an airplane! g

I might have to get a small (but not too small) lathe sometime in the next
year or two, and get with someone that can teach me how to properly use it
to make some things my life would depend on. Even some self study books
would go a long way toward learning some good basics, and then go from there
with some more advanced learning.

I could probably get into a machine shop class at the local community
college. They seem to have a pretty good shop, but I don't know anything
about the teacher.

And yes, I could see how you could get hooked, in a hurry!
--
Jim in NC

I got spoiled by 12 years of running decent lathes and
other stuff for a living in the machine shop, and my own 13 x 36 at
home. Made up to $40 an hour with that one. Then we moved and I sold
all that stuff and now, in the shop at work, we have an ancient South
Bend 9" belt-driven machine that is horrible, and a Bridgeport knee
mill that's wonderful. One of these days I'd like to get another
Taiwanese lathe at home, not one of those little tiny Chinese toy
lathes. My projects tend to be too big for machines like that, and
light lathes can't maintain accuracy because they flex too much under
load.

Dan

wrote:
On Aug 17, 12:21 pm, "Morgans" wrote:
"Dan" wrote

. There are videos on youtube that show one how to do basic work.
Good point! I had never thought of that!

I had unlimited access to a full sized Taiwan knock-off for a while at
school, and nobody knew anything about running it, so I taught myself a few
things. Since the ag teacher that had it in his shop didn't know how to use
it, it went off to surplus sales.

I made a few adapters for some scaffolding, and a few other machine parts,
and got so I was not totally incompetent, but I knew I was incompetent
enough to not want to make anything on it for an airplane! g

I might have to get a small (but not too small) lathe sometime in the next
year or two, and get with someone that can teach me how to properly use it
to make some things my life would depend on. Even some self study books
would go a long way toward learning some good basics, and then go from there
with some more advanced learning.

I could probably get into a machine shop class at the local community
college. They seem to have a pretty good shop, but I don't know anything
about the teacher.

And yes, I could see how you could get hooked, in a hurry!
--
Jim in NC

I got spoiled by 12 years of running decent lathes and
other stuff for a living in the machine shop, and my own 13 x 36 at
home. Made up to $40 an hour with that one. Then we moved and I sold
all that stuff and now, in the shop at work, we have an ancient South
Bend 9" belt-driven machine that is horrible, and a Bridgeport knee
mill that's wonderful. One of these days I'd like to get another
Taiwanese lathe at home, not one of those little tiny Chinese toy
lathes. My projects tend to be too big for machines like that, and
light lathes can't maintain accuracy because they flex too much under
load.

Dan


A big lathe can do tiny work also, but it's not a warm fuzzy feeling
to turn a small object next a huge chuck. If it was up to me I'd have
one of each.

The machine shop at Eglin AFB had lathe with something like a 4 foot
bed. I never asked what they used it for.

A show on television showed a lathe turning a drive shaft for an
aircraft carrier. Now that was a tad too large for me.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

"Dan" wrote

A show on television showed a lathe turning a drive shaft for an
aircraft carrier. Now that was a tad too large for me.

How about a milling machine large enough to profile and balance an aircraft
carrier propeller?

Yep, a bit big for me, too.

I wonder if that 4 foot lathe was used for truing compressor wheels from jet
engines?
--
Jim in NC

Dan wrote:
A big lathe can do tiny work also, but it's not a warm fuzzy feeling
to turn a small object next a huge chuck. If it was up to me I'd have
one of each.

The machine shop at Eglin AFB had lathe with something like a 4 foot
bed. I never asked what they used it for.

A show on television showed a lathe turning a drive shaft for an
aircraft carrier. Now that was a tad too large for me.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired


The problem with small pieces on a big lathe is spinning them fast
enough to get a good surface finish. I had an employee with a sherline
lathe and mill that we set up in the lab at work. I used to tease him
about the fact that I could chuck his whole rig up in either one of my
big lathes. None the less, I used his lathe at work quite often to get
a number of our jobs done. After a while he was ribbing me when he
noticed me bringing small jobs into work to do on his lathe since it was
so mush easier and more pleasant. Even though I already had three
lathes, I bought a Chinese mini lathe for small parts for my shop. I
also bought a really small lathe that I could pack in a suitcase and
take with me on extended business trips. Actually built a small steam
engine in a hotel room with it.

Charles.

"Dan" == Dan writes:

Dan There are videos on
Dan youtube that show one how to do basic work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGszB...eature=related

Metal forming on a lathe is a beautiful thing. Somewhere on youtube--
perhaps the same fellow as the above link--is how to make an aluminum
aircraft spinner from a flat aluminum circle. Truly an art form.
--
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at
heart.
~ Anne Frank, holocaust victim

Bob Fry wrote:
"Dan" == Dan writes:

Dan There are videos on
Dan youtube that show one how to do basic work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGszB...eature=related

Metal forming on a lathe is a beautiful thing. Somewhere on youtube--
perhaps the same fellow as the above link--is how to make an aluminum
aircraft spinner from a flat aluminum circle. Truly an art form.

They make it look easy. I wonder how much practice it takes to get
that good.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

Stealth Pilot wrote:
Kyle gets the mini lathe home and then what???

snip

Years ago the father of good friend was a retired tool and die maker and
had taught machine shop in a community college. At the time I had
access to a lathe and didn't have a clue how to use it. His suggestion
was to buy some closet dowel and start my experimenting on that. His
reasoning was that I wouldn't ruin any cutting tools and the doweling
was pretty cheap.

I too am in the market for a lathe but I need something large enough to
turn some wheel hubs and disk brake carriers.

Tony