The aim of this instructable is to make a wood lathe from recycled and scrap materials and use it to make some lovely things. why a lathe? you can use it to make beautiful birthday and christmas pressies for family and friends and to craft all manner of things to help in other projects.. Since so much of my lathe way built from materials on hand i didn’t spend more than $750 to acquire the remaining materials needing. if you had to buy everything to make a comparable machine i’d guesstimate about $2000 in materials. this obviously doesn’t include machinist fees etc if you have to pay someone to build the lathe.. Build a wood lathe from scratch and start turning. building your own power tools is a specialized skill, but with the right planning and patience you can diy everything in your workshop..
Place your lathe shaft and seal-bearing cartridge in the metal tubing and tighten the set screws to prevent the shaft from moving. mount the lathe head onto the shaft over the bed, and place the pulley on the opposite end of the shaft. build the tailstock in a similar fashion as the headstock (using 1/2-inch thick plating and steel pipe).. There are two types of wood lathe that you can make: fixed-speed or variable-speed.. fixed-speed lathes. with a fixed-speed lathe, you can only perform wood-turning to a limited degree, due to the fixed speed at which the spindle rotates.. Quite impractical to use belts, pulleys and bearings when the concept is making a wood lathe in 30 minutes!. considering that electric motors commonly come at 2400 or 2800 rpm as well as the cheaper low speed ones, finding the right motor is part of the fun of creation..
