Turning Wood with Metal Lathe

[Steve H Graham]

I had to make bench dogs yesterday, so I turned wood for the first time. Up until now I have only turned metal and plastic.

This is probably blasphemy, but I used a quick change tool post with an HSS spooling tool on a 16" metal lathe.

Now that I have seen how useful this can be, I am wondering if I can get away with using this thing for wood regularly. I'm a little nervous about working close to the giant chuck, but I suppose there is a way to make it safe. I also have a Big Dog mini-lathe.

Turning wood using the cross slide is no problem, but it would be nice to be able to do stuff freehand. I am not really interested in things like furniture legs, but it would be useful to be able to do items like tool handles. The small lathe can do crude CNC, but that's not really woodturning.

Is it realistic to expect to be able to do this safely on these lathes? If so, can anyone point me to a good source of basic training so I don't kill myself?

[Thom Sturgill]

My father's hobbies and later occupations was as a licensed gunsmith (mostly did custom stocks) and as a violin, guitar, and banjo maker. He used an old metal lathe to turn violin pegs, tail pieces, and banjo rims when he needed them as well as the occasional rifle barrel.

[Steve Peterson]

I believe that most production made round wood items are cut on what is essentially a metal lathe with a solid cutting head. Even semi-production copy-carvers have one master setting the cutting path on 10 or more pieces of wood at the same time. The process is completely different than the freehand cutting action on a real wood lathe.

My guess is that the biggest drawback from using your metal lathe is the cleanup while switching between wood and metal. Metal cutting wants coolant and lubrication. Wood cutting is done dry. The forces in cutting wood are much smaller, so it won't hurt your lathe, but sawdust is going to get everywhere.

Attach a wood lathe tool rest to your metal lathe and have fun.

Steve

[Steve H Graham]

Thanks for the replies. I'm surprised at the quality of the wood in a Home Depot roller handle (what I used for the bench dogs I turned).

[Paul Williams]

I turned for several years on a 6" Atlas metal lathe before I broke down and bought a wood lathe. clean up is the biggest problem. You can make a tool rest to use normal wood turning tools however, getting close to the wood and still having room to lower the handle enough to ride the bevel was a problem on my small lathe. Good luck. You will be joining us soon.

[Steve H Graham]

Here is a question that may get me labeled as a lunatic.

I see that wood lathes use spur centers with tapered shafts. I am wondering if there is any reason why I couldn't have one with a straight shaft.

If I could put a center right in the 3-jaw chuck, with the straight shaft chucked tightly, it would save me the grief of taking the chuck off, and it would also move the left side of the work several inches away from the terrifying whirling chuck jaws.

The lathe has a 40" bed, and I foresee myself turning tiny objects a foot or less long, so I don't care about losing working space.

[Paul Williams]

There is no reason that you can not hold the head of the spur center in your metal chuck. You will only have about 1/2 inch to hold, but that was enough for several small turnings that I did before buying a wood lathe. Also there is no reason you could not turn a MT2 taper into a round bar and hold the bar in your metal chuck.

[Enrico Caruso]

Steve, I regularly use my 3 jaw and 4 jaw chucks on my Craftsman wood lathe without difficulty. My lathe dates to 1938 and was designed for the hobbist as a wood or light metal (aluminum or brass) cutting tool. I have standard wood turning tool rests and a cross-slide with tool post for metal use. It is not a lead screw machine. A possible hint to avoid the jaws is to mark your workpiece all around with a red Sharpie drawn line at a safe distance.
Rick

[Jason Edwards]

I started my adult woodturning career on a 10" Rockwell metal lathe. Did a lot of free hand work turning the OD's of a bowl with high speed tools in a tool post and did the ID of the bowls with a boring bar in a toolpost. Eventually moved onto using scrapers. Trying to use gouges and chisels in a conventional woodturning fashion is clumsy because there is just too much stuff in the way. All the things that make your metal lathe a good tool for working on metal works against turning wood. You are already recognizing some of the shortcomings. If you had a real wood lathe, you'd never fire up your metal lathe for wood again. But keep turning and having fun. If you really like woodturning you'll get a lathe better suited to it. That's what happened to me.

[Joe Kaufman]

How about chucking an Extended Reach #2MT adapter in your chuck. You can position yourself a little further from the chuck jaws and even add a wood or aluminum disk against the jaws for added protection.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#morse-taper-extensions/=yhs5ok

[Steve H Graham]

My spindle taper is a 7MT, so anything that plugs into it will be expensive.

[Joe Kaufman]

Use your 3 jaw metalworking chuck to grip the extension on the straight portion. Number 2MT spur drives are relatively inexpensive. Your maximum spindle speed is going to limit turning smaller diameters easily.

[Steve H Graham]

Best I can do is 2000.

[roger oldre]

this is a 1949 10" atlas purchased new for turning wood! Turn a taper adapter for a #7- #2 mt on your lathe and remove the chuck.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Steve I started to turn wood on a large metal lathe in our shop some 57 years ago, and have turned wood on this metal lathe for the last 20 years, and still do.

I fabricated the pieces I needed to turn wood on this lathe, most of my turnings are larger bowls and platters on this lathe, to do this I build the outboard platform and mounted the lathe on a heavy I beam, the few spindles I do turn inboard, for that I use a banjo from a General lathe that was the right height, it sits on top of the ways and so doesn’t damage them at all, hollow forms can be turned there also, using the cross slide is just nothing like turning freehand.

Using metal chucks to turn wood is not a good idea, the small areas that press onto the wood are just not right or even safe, and yes I do know that, as half a century ago we did not have the woodturning chucks available, and so I have used them, but I would not do that anymore with the good wood chucks available.

My Stronghold chuck is mounted on a MT#5 and is held in with a drawbar, if you are able to fabricate the pieces you need, than a metal lathe is a viable choice to turn wood on.

You don’t need the high RPMs unless you want to turn toothpicks or pens, mine has a top speed of something like 1500 RPMs, you might need some extra skill to turn at these speeds, it should not be a problem if you use cutting tools rather than scrapers.

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You can purchase a spur centre from Oneway that goes directly unto a chuck, see link

http://oneway.ca/index.php?route=pro...product_id=451