While I love having a shop, one of the few things that I don’t like about mine is the lighting. It’s a 2 car garage with no windows, and while I’ve upgraded the lighting over the years, ceiling lights are only capable of so much. For example, if I’m turning a deep wood bowl, its hard to see the tip of the cutting tool. This is potentially dangerous because you have a higher chance of a catch when you can’t see what you are doing. On my mill, safety is less of a concern, but not being able to see the work, can turn a simple task into a choir.
The best way to fix this type of issue is to use task lights, so you can aim the light right where you need it most. Task lights range in price from “um OK”, to “holly hell”. Decent lights that use incandescent bulbs start around $50, and models that use LED lights seem to hover around $200. If I was spending 8 hours a day 5 days a week standing at a machine I’d probably just buy a good light. However, I’m a hobbyist and probably spend no more than 4 hours a week in the shop on average, so I wanted a cheaper solution. Continue Reading…
My latest project was to cleanup and mount my birthday present to myself, A Lathemaster 5″ 5C tru-setting chuck. I made two mods right off the bat, studs for mounting it to the spindle, and brass tip set screws for adjusting the run out. Overall I’m very please with the chuck, considering the price point. In the video I demonstrate how to hold threded parts in a 3 jaw chuck, without mangling the threads. I also show some finishing inserts, that work really well on small lathes like mine.
My latest project, Is one I have wanted to check off the list for a long time. My lathe didn’t come with a 4 jaw chuck, and I’ve always found workarounds when I needed one, so recently when I came across a good deal on a chuck, I snatched it up. Since my lathe doesn’t use a standard chuck mounting scheme, I had to turn a custom back plate to mount the chuck. Making a back plate is usually a fairly easy task, but since I didn’t have a chuck big enough to hold the back plate blank, I had to devise a work holding scheme using my face plate. This video documents the steps I used to make the back plate.
In the final video of the series, I finish machining the stop, only to find out I won’t be able to use the thumb screws i purchased after all. After recovering from the thumb screw issue, i demonstrate how I lap parts, and how the stop functions when in use. Now that it’s all said an done, I think this was a good project for me to break in the new mill with, as it let me learn what the limits of the machine are.
In the second installment of this series I machine all the critical features of the stop. I demonstrate how to accurately measure the depth of a v grove as well as a little trick to get around not having a DRO.