Milling/drilling on a lathe

Stephen,

I have made a holder that take a standard cylindrical air drill and fits on the Dixon toolpost of my lathe - works a treat as I can point it to a face ie parallel to the lathe axis, or a periphery ie 90 degrees to the lathe axis. Even has a screw to bear on the button to keep the drill running ! Crude but very effective.

AWEM

AWEM

I use an old-pattern B&D drill in its '70s cradle for jobs like this. There is still plenty of this old stuff about.

Another approach would be to use the headstock assembly from a Unimat.

I know what you mean. I made a clamp out of 10mm steel plate that mounts in the toolpost - there is a slotted hole to clamp the neck of a drill which locates fairly accurately (square) against the face of the plate.

Its also ideal for cutting slots in tubes (tube mounted in the chuck) with a milling bit mounted in the drill.

Steve

Just looking around the web and found this,

Humm, never thought of that, thats a good idea!

Stephen.

Along those lines a suppose I could buy a cheap small pillar drill and butcher it for parts, one of the cheap £30 ones they sell in DIY shops....

Stephen.

Stephen

I am sure what you found is interesting, its just that the link does not seem to work for me.

Ian Phillips

Strange, worked when I posted the link.....

The shear number of hits he must have got from people read my post must have crashed his server, or maybe not ;-)

Stephen

didnt work for me either

Sounds good.

Twenty or thirty years ago, when one drill was expected to do everything from drill to saw and back, there were all sorts of cradles and jigs available. I have adapted these in the past, but only the original drills will fit and these are getting a bit past it now!

This is a followup to a post I made some time ago, I have now found the perfect solution, shame it costs so much :-)