tools, materials & knowledge for model makers
Just received a post from Alan @ Woody’s Workshop with a spreadsheet for calculating lathe compound slide angles. If you want to turn accurate tapers then is is a useful approach. The useful bit is that this also includes a table so that you can lookup an angle and get the change in x for a … Read more
Perhaps less about machining pewter buttons and more about holding them so we could. The pewter buttons have been cast in an open one-sided sand mold. The stars on the front face are the important face to keep. The open casting means the thicknesses are variable. The big issue was there was no easy way … Read more
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
I’ve removed the top-slide before, however, have you seen the underside of a Warco top-slide? Perhaps more interesting is the top of the cross-slide? Not sure if this is unique to the Warco WM240B. The top slide is bolted down with a collar and two M8 bolts. This allows the top-slide to be rotated for … Read more
Some time ago I did some free turning on a metal lathe. Namely a Hobbymat MD65 and I was turning a steel spinning top. My approach at that time was to use a technique that mimicked that of wood turning. I ground a broken HSS centre drill into a lathe tool. The round bar of … Read more
24V DC Motor for the Unimat 3 designed, made and authored by Ray Dean, Sydney. I thought you might be interested in this story about my little Unimat 3. I needed a new motor for Unimat 3 where I had fitted a sewing machine motor in place of the original which had blown when I … Read more
How many times do you use lathe chuck spacers? How do you keep all of the spacers in place whilst aligning the workpiece in the chuck? I had this problem recently with a small flywheel that I was holding in external jaws. I needed to space the chuck away from the plain of the jaws … Read more
There are a few ways of Reducing Runout of a 3 jaw chuck. One way is to fit a better quality 3 jaw chuck that fundamentally has less runout. This was what I did when I upgraded the standard 3 jaw chuck on the Warco WM240b to a Soba chuck. You can use shims to … 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