I’ve been asked about my lathe’s carriage lock a few times over they years, and just the other day I was asked about it dimensions. Thus, I thought now might be a good time to do a little write up on it. The first thing to note is that this was a completely off the cuff design, so almost none of the dimensions need to be exact to work.
- The M8 threaded section measured from the bottom of the head is 0.900″ long.
- The bottom section of the head is 0.489″ in diameter, and 0.361″ heigh.
- The top section of the head is 0.388″ in diameter, and 0.388″ heigh.
- The cross bar is 0.216″ in diameter and 3.835″ long.
- Both ends of the cross bar are tapped M4, and short M4 socket head caps crews are used to ensure it doesn’t slide out of the head.
The only really important thing you need to do to the carriage lock is adjust the length of the M8 to ensure it looks up in the appropriate location. Ideally you want it to be locked down tight when its parallel to the cross slide. If it’s parallel when locked, then turning it 90 degrees counter clockwise and it should be fully unlocked. If You mount it, and it doesn’t line up appropriately rechunk the body in the lathe and trim a few thousands off the bottom of the M8 section. repeat the trimming process until the lock lines up correctly.
This started off as something that should have taken a few hours at most, and ballooned into a 2 week project, thanks to some unforeseen issues.
In this video I show the maching of a simple aluminum adapter. The adapter will allow me to mount A Tentacle Sync E timecode generator to any cameras hot shoe. The Tentacle Sync E comes with Velcro hooks built into it’s body. It’s designed to be mounted to the cameras and camera gear with sticky back Velcro loop material. Since I Don’t won’t to apply the sticky back velcro directly to my cameras, nor do I think it would work well on my small mirrorless bodies, I designd this custom adapter.
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A quick little project to replace a jig I’ve been using for years.
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I’ve been experimenting with rust bluing for a little while, but haven’t been able to achieve the results that I know are possible. After a decent amount of research I came to the conclusion that I was not removing the loose rust that forms during the bluing process properly, and that is why I was getting inferior results. To remedy the issue I purchased a carding wheel specifically designed for the task.
Upon receiving wheel, I determined i didn’t like the method most people used to mounted the wheel, so I sat down and designed an arbor that would allow me to mount the arbor safely and accurately on my wood lathe. The following video shows the process of making the arbor.
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