/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1318050
That is the beautiful part mate, it is a 'combination lathe'. Basically, it is a wood lathe that can be made into a light duty metal lathe by using a jack shaft to slow down the RPM enough to work metal. While it is not for heavy duty work I guaranty you it is better than any 'precision' piece of shit being sold at HF.

Check this picture out. Old school woodworking lathes use 2 step pulleys with a belt between them to drive the spindle inside the headstock. One pulley on the motor, one on the spindle. Metalworking lathes generally use step pulley on the motor that was connected to a series of gears by a belt to reduce the RPM. Gears prevented slipping that would happen at higher torque when doing heavy work but belts were fine for light duty stuff. The one in my picture uses a jackshaft, the extra shaft and step pulleys mounted below the lathe and the motor, to do the same thing using just belts. It is not as good as a gear driven lathe but it allows you to work metal and still be able to work wood because you still had access to the higher RPM settings with a quick belt change. You can do this with any of the old school woodworking lathes because they were so beefy. Cast iron for days, overbuild head and tail stocks, and generally much larger bearings then they would use for such machines these days.

Woodworking lathes generally sell for a lot less than a metal work one and all you have to do is add a jack shaft and swap in some lathe chucks. Those old lathes often used standard threading so swapping out parts is fairly easy and there is plenty of aftermarket stuff around. Check out the OWWM forums, they are a gold mine. Be sure to register, only a few boards are visible to unregistered viewers.

>>1318051
This guy gets it.