which lathe to get for turning long poles

[Virgil Johnson]

I have an order for a torii gate and need to have good round poles 7-8" in diameter and 8 -10 feet long or longer.
Good stock seems not to be available so I will make my own.

Looking at some of the grizzly machines at the moment.

The issue is the length - getting the tailstock mounted to an extended bed - and power.

Or should I just make my own specialized turning machine?

Virgil

[Mike Henderson]

Unless you just want a new lathe, it might be cheaper to contract out the poles to someone who has a long lathe.

Mike

[Virgil Johnson]

Need a new lathe really. Sold my big Conover some years ago and regretted it.

Besides. Who could leave this challenge pass by? chuckle

Virgil

[Richard Bell CA]

Virgil:

Take a look at this - a few ideas here.

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=d4b7vjd_2c4z7d5

Good luck

Richard

[Jeff Willard]

Need a new lathe really. Sold my big Conover some years ago and regretted it.

Yep. That would be the machine to have right now. I understand though, that Oneway will make custom beds, of any length, provided of course...$$$ .

[george wilson]

Hold the mustard!! You need an old patternmaker's lathe. They have a carriage similar to a metal lathe,some with power feed,so cylinder turning is easy and accurate. they can be very large,and very heavily built.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Lathes used to have their beds made from wood. You could find some LVL to make the ways (bed) from. If you have welding skills, beds could be made from two pieces of 6" channel steel. Then you could figure out a drive system, along with tail piece. Use a "box, with a router riding on it to do actual cutting.

[Frank Drew]

You don't need one continuous long bed to turn long stuff; you can find spare beds with legs for some medium priced lathes (like delta/rockwell) and you just park it in line at whatever distance that puts your tailstock where you want it to be, without too much of a gap between the beds that you can't turn the whole post. You could even fab up a stand out of angle iron and whatnot that would mount the tailstock firmly enough to do the job.

For just this one job, though, the path of least resistance might be to find a long lathe somewhere and possibly rent some time on it if you want to do the turning yourself; maybe a place that makes porch posts, or a shop that has a patternmaker's lathe, as George suggests.

[John Schreiber]

I've thought about something similar. For most of the stock reduction, I don't think you want a lathe as such. You just want a way to hold the stock between centers, then spin the work by hand and use a router to do the stock removal.

After you've got the pillar down to close to the final size, then you could use lathe chisels etc, but since you've done most of the work with the router, your power requirements are way down.

[John Gornall]

Nova 1624 or DVR - the bed is 2 pieces. Unbolt the piece with the tailstock and bolt it down on your workebench and move the piece with the headstock down the other end of the shop. Do a little aligning and away you go. Tool rest will also be a bit of an issue but not a big deal.

Bill Grumbine had pictures of turning a sailboat mast using 2 lathes on his website.

[russell lusthaus]

Although not a solution to your lathe issue, possibly you could glue up blanks in the manner used to make hollow masts and columns. You router a birdsmouth notch lengthwise on blanks and glue them together (8, 12, or 16 sided). Special bits for this notch. Also seen it done with two passes per piece on the table saw. From there, you would knock the corners with a block plane and spoke shave. Plug the open ends. Just a thought.

[Gary Herrmann]

Do the poles have to be one continuous non-joined piece? If not, just use a standard length lathe. On my 3520b, I think the max distance between centers is 34.5". Turn the 8" diameter spindle with say a 2-3" diameter tenon. I'm not sure how strong the pole has to be, but lets say the tenon is 4" long.

Turn the next spindle length with a matching mortise (a little deeper than the tenon is long to give the glue somewhere to go) and a tenon on the other end. Measure out how many sections you need and then glue them up. If you make a template or use calipers, the outside diameters will match up very closely and could still be hand sanded flush if needed.

If you don't think your hollowing skills are up to it, you could use a forstner bit for the mortises.

That's how I would do it, fwiw.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

This ought to do the trick.

[Virgil Johnson]

I had decided that I would use a router to rough out the long blank.

I thought of joining short lengths together but I am afraid the joints would telegraph thorugh the paint - and since a torii gate is very decorative that would be a disaster.

I could join staves and hand work it and get away with that.
Quality hand working a torii gate would be very acceptable - since that how they probably were made originally.

But the key is that I want a new lathe!

Just looking for something to justify another 800 pounds of metal in my shop.

Thanks to all.

Virgil

[Joshua Dinerstein]

My Powermatic 3520b can have a an entire second bed attached to it. Gives you a long long lathe bed. I ran into a guy who was here in Utah that had done it. He was trying to sell it as he was closing is milling business and moving to CO at that time.

He liked the approach. It made it heavy but for something that big that can be a good thing. I remember looking one and they were about $800 at the time for the 5' bed "extension", read second body and leg(s).

Could be worth it. I was going to mention the Conover lathe but as you said you sold one you already know about them.

Good luck,
Joshua