tools, materials & knowledge for model makers
A free hand and ball turning tool designed to work on the Warco WM240B lathe. I’ve done some free hand turning before and although it was ok, I used a wood working technique and this is a bit dangerous with metal. With the need to turn the curve on the smokebox door of the Burrell … Read more
Special lathe tools for brass are actually quite reasonable to make. You can machine the tool from a piece of square mild steel and then case harden the cutting end. This means it’s quite easy to make intricate designs as mild steel can easily be machined on the milling machine. The lathe tool machined from … Read more
The are a number of things to consider when clamping the lathe tool into the toolpost, lathe tool clamping: clean surfaces correct height clamping base overhang One of the first things to do when changing a lathe tool or fitting a new tool is to clean all surfaces. You will be applying a lot of … Read more
After living with the runout on my Warco WM240B 3-Jaw for some time I decided to replace the chuck with a 125mm Soba 3-Jaw Lathe Chuck. The replacement of the chuck was a fairly easy process. However, you need some patience and time to get the backplate right. After searching the internet I ordered the … Read more
The lathe tools are held in a toolpost on the lathe cross-slide and which are then fed into the rotating workpiece to machine it to size. Lathe tools are made from high speed steel (HSS), Tungsten Carbide or other very hard materials such as diamond. Angles and Clearances The cutting and clearance angles of a … Read more
Reduce any Overhangs is all about increasing the stiffness of the workpiece, the machine and the tool. An overhang equals flexibility. One key parameter with regards to any tools is to reduce the overhang and so reduce the chance of chatter or even worse parts and tools breaking. The image shows a simple change in … Read more
I bought this Glanze Profiling Tool to use on the Warco WM240b lathe. The tool comes with a torx key, but no space insert. Although being round you can rotate the insert and so re-use more of the cutting edge before giving up on the bit. A close up of the insert shows the fine … Read more
Having bought a Warco WM240b lathe I needed some larger tools as everything up until now had been based around my HobbyMat and Unimat 3 that are both very happy with 6mm tooling. At 6mm I have a set of the cheap general purpose indexable TCT tools. They are ok, but the screw is weak … Read more