August 10, 2011 update:
I’ve made a few things “useful” things with my lathe, but here’s my first piece of jewelery, a holder for a lucky penny.
In my workshop, I have this lathe that I bought from a friends brothers farm. The brand is a “Force” lathe. I believe it was originally imported by House of Tools in Edmonton. I’m using this thread to document some notes about it that I’m gathering from various internet sources.
So it is a “standard chinese-made lathe” 12×36 inch. Very similar to Craftex 12×36 sold by Busy Bee Tools. Very similar to Birmingham YCL 12×36″ lathe. Identical to the Grizzly G4003 12×36 lathe.
I’m slowly learning about lathes from watching youtube videos, and gradually accumulating measuring and cutting tools, lubricant and pumps, and books. There’s always something else that I need to buy for it. Recently it was a proper cut-off tool, and shims. And boring bars, drill bits.
Here are some measurements of its parts.
Here it is, cleaned up a little bit.
It has a cross-slide travel of 5.125″ which means it can face 10.25″ diameter. It’s minimum speed of 65 is a little too fast for working with large-diameter pieces.
And I want to buy or build on outboard spindle support like this:
