About 15 years ago I built a wooden wood lathe with 12.00 worth of oak that I got from a local saw mill.
DSCF7923.JPG
It has served the purpose pretty well but I've been wanting something better for a while now. I have thought seriously for a couple of years about buying a new lathe but I finally decided to build one more. There were several things wrong with my last model. I used green oak (what did I know) or at least it wasn't completely dry. I had some warpage and shrinkage in places that caused problems. Some pieces developed cracks where I crossed the grain. Other places shrunk causing miss-allignment between the headstock and tailstock, etc.
DSCF8756.JPGDSCF8776.JPGDSCF8760.jpg
This time I decided I would try laminating pieces to minimize warpage. I started with the rails that would support everything.
DSCF8763.jpgDSCF8765.jpgDSCF8783.JPG
I wanted a precise way to move the tool rest up and down the ways so I decided to copy metal lathes and build in a "V" way as a guide for the carriage.
DSCF8809.jpg
More to follow............