How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

[Rob Cunningham]

Each year I have the week off between Christmas and New Years. I usually try to do some shop maintenance or shop improvement. This year I focused on lathe stuff.
My first project was a donut chuck. It's made from 3/4" oak plywood that was left over from a project. I put t-nuts in the donut plate and use all-thread rod and wing nuts to tighten it down.
The next project was a set of Cole jaws for my Talon chuck. They are made from 3/8" Baltic Birch plywood and will take up to a 10 1/2" diameter.
I also made a steady rest, not nearly as nice as the ones Jeff makes, but it works.
My biggest accomplishment was to upgrade my lathe from a 4 step pulley to variable speed. I picked up a used treadmill for $20 and stripped the motor and control board from it. The motor is a 1 3/4 hp DC. The mounting plate fit without any modification so hooking it up was simple. I only got to play on the lathe a little bit yesterday but I know I'm really going to like this VS

[Steve Schlumpf]

Rob - very nice work on everything! Nice designs! Sounds like you are going to love the VS and the 1 3/4 hp can't hurt either! Hope you get some shop time real soon and get to play with everything!

[Dahl Troy Perry]

Please tell us more about the up grade to your lathe what type treedmill pictures pictures pictures of the motor and controler.

[Mauricio Ulloa]

Really nice and productive way to spend the holidays!!!!

[Rob Cunningham]

Please tell us more about the up grade to your lathe what type treedmill pictures pictures pictures of the motor and controler.

The treadmill was a Trimline 1100, I'm going to guess it was from the late 80's, early 90's. I found it on Craigslist. The motor controller is just a small circuit board with a potentiometer. I put the on-off switch, pot and a power light into a small Plexiglas box that I made and mounted it onto a board coming up from behind the lathe. The control board is mounted under the lathe table near the motor. Max speed on the motor is 4800 rpm. I left the 4 step pulley in the headstock (because I didn't want to take that apart) and have a single pulley on the motor. I'll have to bring the tachometer home from work and make some speed markings near the pot dial.
Hope that answers some questions, if not, just ask.

[Greg Just]

Rob:

Nice work. I did a similar thing. Cleaned everything, re-arranged the shop a bit to be more functional and made a few tool racks. I still need to make a donut chuck and steady rest. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.

Happy New Year!