$30 Lathe Tour

[Doug Shepard]

This time I have my Turner's Forum Hall Pass pics.

I mentioned on another thread that I might look into turning a chisel mallet. Since I've never posted much (if anything) here in Lathe-land I thought I'd give a tour of my lathe. It's only slightly interesting from a historical perspective. I've never run across anybody else with one of these and didn't even know these existed. This is one of the first tools ever made by Delta. The label has the original company name "Delta Specialty Co".
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Bought this from a guy the next street over during a garage sale. He wanted to get it out of his garage pretty bad and kept lowering the price on me. Finally at $30, I decided to take it back to my No-Kill Tool Shelter. That included a box of assorted motley turning tools, none of which was in very good shape. When I got it, it was pretty much covered in grease, grime, and a LOT of rust on the bed and other parts. Took a lot of soaking in WD40, scrubbing, sanding, etc., and I've never been able to completely rid the original paint of it's grimy look (the paint comes off before the grime does). The threads on the turning shaft were pretty boogered up, but I took it into the machine shop at work and a friend there stuck it on a metal lathe and recut the threads for me. The thing actually works, though all I've managed to do with it so far are turn some 1/4" decorative paduak dowels for pegging some M&T joints.
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[Doug Shepard]

The guy I bought it from had it mounted on a rickety 2x12 frame setup that threatened to topple over just looking at it. The only idea I took from that stand was making it low for sit-down use. My stand is from 2 layers of 3/4" BB ply. The black wood pieces you see on top of the bed are outrigger legs that attach with a couple of bolts onto the ends when the stand is rolled out for use. The 4x4 rails under the stand are angled on one end with some HD transfer balls mortised in. Once the opposite end is raised about 1-1/2" the transfer balls engage and I can roll the stand around.The motor mount is sort of modeled on the original 2x12 stand. It's mounted on a board that pivots so that you can put the belt on whatever pulleys you want. I did manage to pick up a decent chuck a few years back during a Woodcraft sale, but really need to see about getting a few half decent tools. A couple of the ones that came with it might be made useable, but the majority are pretty much junk.
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[Bernie Weishapl]

That is pretty cool Doug for $30. Thanks for sharing.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Doug....that old rascal will probably be turning when our newer ones have bitten the dust. Looks like you stole that for $30! Thanks for posting!