Wood Lathe

Have you tried the Book of Kings? Norm

Could you expand on that a little please?

I hardly thought that further explanation would be required! Dan Brown come back all is forgiven!

Norm

Bob, I got to Seventeen and a half cubitts- and their diameter was Four. HA had moved on to brass!

Prof Thom would have probably suggested actual measurements using the planet Venus.

There you are, Michael! All the clever stuff.

Norm

Of course,our dear Michael could actually buy a woodturning lathe. In an earlier posting about Clarke and Chronos, Chronos is selling new lathes for what cannot be more than a couple of tanks of petrol.

Do you think that we should tell him- or keep it secret? Or say, in the Book of Chron(os)icles!!

Norm, I need a lathe that can turn a 4.5m x 0.6m piece of wood. If you can find one of those that is 'cost effective' for a one off project then please let me know.....

Michael

How much is 'cost effective'? And how much does the bit of wood weigh?

So, Michael, Science has discovered the--- Log!

Now if you had followed the reference to Hiram Abiff, the stuff was a bloody sight more solid and cast brass- and hollow and adorned with " network, lily work and pomegranets" and a bloody big ball on each. This was - I assume 4000 years ago and I just missed it by a tad.

Now in this day and age, all you need is two pointed ends of steel. to support the log- and a long solid baulk of timber as a spacer. With a matey or two, you mount the ends in grease and get stuck in with a long chisel on a rest. Some comic wraps an endless rope around it and drives it with a bike wheel.

All you are doing is is emulating what the old ship wrights did in the past. If you have read your history- and clearly you haven't- you will find that ornamental turning lathes were constructed with two stocks- a head and a tail in precisely that way. Again, if you have read George Stephenson, Rocket's cylinders were so badly bored that the foreman's felt hat had to be stuffed in.

The two most difficult parts in the job are to get someone daft enough to bugger about with a bloody big log and the frictional inertia caused by the inability to get back to the fundamentals of mechanics.

OK, go into Google and look up Bodgers Lathes. I don't have to, I understood the principles before 1933!

Norm

Cost effective, is as little money as possible (under £400 ideally), I've already got a whole workshop and so thought it would be easier to fabricate something then go out and buy it. As I said before, I'll only need it for a one project.....

No idea on the wood yet, thought I'd organise the lathe side of things first. I guess you could get a rough idea if I was to tell you 4.5m x 0.6m, made of, probably pine.....

Michael

So you've got a lathe! And I have been looking East for a miracle- and missed it. So what's stopping you? use the wrong end of the headstock- as the headstock and whip the tailstock the arse way around using the lathe back to front. It's only 60 or 2 feet in diameter- give or take a midge's foreskin.

Wander around a cathedral- Good for the soul- and ponder just how the masons made the pillars. And young Michael, we are back to the Book of Kings.

Norman

I'd consider something made with chunky I-beam or RHS. Add automotive wheel hubs - cheap, strong, big, boltable to primitive bracketry, and brake discs are natural mounting flanges which neatly fit the bearings (holes through the discs, with spikey bolts protruding into the wood?). Could do something with a half-shaft to link up the motor. Unless you can weigh it down with lots more weight than the wood you're turning, I'd be tempted to bolt it all to the floor.

Wally, I think that this guy thinks that the trains runover the tops of the Forth Railway Bridge!

Like your Uffa Fox "baby"

Norm

Well I have 2 actually! BUT, I'm still at school and the lathes are bolted to the floor right next to other machinery etc so what you said just wouldn't be an option.....

Looks like Wally has the best suggestion so far...

You guys are coming up with better suggestions than the woodworking groups......

Michael.

Anyone who's ever actually stood and watched them knows that they don't. They run down into the dips. That way, the weight from the following carriages rolling down into a dip helps to push the leading carriages up the other side. The engine can then pull the train over the bridge for very little energy input. Were it the other way round, there would be a massive waste of fuel as the loco undertook the initial task of climbing the first hump to start the process off - doing it in the dips means that the lead carriages start by dropping down and gathering momentum. Apparently, the fuel burn can be as low as 20% of normal for the same speed. Makes the passengers boak, though...

Cheers. :-)

Have you thought about going to Vickers Armstrong to see if they still had one of those lathes they turned the gun barrels of the Dreadnoughts on?????

Apparently, 'southern pine' weighs 590kg per cubic metre. That means your bit of wood weighs about 1.5 tonnes. What are you planning to make out of it?

No not yet....

Michael

Alvis are still making tanks in the old Vickers Factory in Scotswood- just past the Robin Adair. The Chain Bridge is gone but I could give you instructions. Blaydon Races and that!

You'll need a tank to carry a suitable lathe!

Norm

It will be for a Radio Control Submarine (Russian Akula Gepard). Plan is to make the fibreglass plug out of wood.

Michael