Member postings for Ian Skeldon 2

That's lovely mate, nice one.

ChrisB I had a nightmare getting my lathe to cut the thread I wanted (internal and external imperial on my metric lathe).

Thankfully there was an answer and pretty much all of those involved in this thread helped me to sort it out, looks like your issue is going to be more difficult to resolve, maybe buy a load of bushes and hope you never need them

Ian

Crikey, is that the some old horse etc, etc. That takes me back some 40 odd years. Has anyone used the cheap (around £20) chinese digital angle guages? if so are they accurate?

Ian

I read somewhere on line but not on this forum about a DIY adjustable stop that disengaged the tumbler gear, I wish I had book marked it as I can't find it now. IIRC it would allow pretty fine adjustment but until I can find it I can't say much more about it.

Ian

Hi Jason,

On various websites there are several DIY projects showing various ways to knock the machine out of autofeed using a stop type bed clamp. I also remember being told as a lad that shearing the leadscrew pinion would cost me to have it replaced whereas running a saddle into a running chuck would end my apprenticeship. I can only assume that that was because either it was more costly or more dangerous, or maybe both.

Best regards, Ian

A couple of very simple tips for absolute beginers.

On my bigger lathe I have a QCTP and a conventional TP on the smaller lathe.

TIP : My preferred method of setting the tool height is to simply face the work piece, when the small nub has gone tool is at correct height.

TIP : I have lots of cheap feeler guage fingers to allow me to get the tool bang on, I can very quickly shim up a tool to get it right using these for final adjustment.

I have made brass GIB strips for the older lathe to replace the worn steel ones, the carriage is now slop free but movable.

Ian

Hi Chris B,

I am sure your last sentence was tongue in cheek, however in order to help prevent another crash which may cause more serious damage or even worse hurt you, why not look at making a carriage stop, nothing elaborate. It will allow you to work with gaps of thous between your chuck and tool post knowing that it cannot creep into the chuck.

Please don't take this advice as criticism, we have all done or nearly done what you have done at some point.

ATB Ian

Men ifr, I did tell you how much work I had to put into getting my Chester lathe to a reasonable standard, don't expect too much of the replacement, theyr'e reasonable at best but can be made to produce good results if you put a lot of work in.

Nice work mate.

Well that's a start, I think somebody else mentioned that the thread gauge may not be necessary. I do cut threads from time to time and find that for me the gauge is of little use as I keep the halfnuts engaged from start til finish and use reverse, of course you may have a different view on that.

Hi Coggy,

Well I am from Crewe in Cheshire so it wouldn't be very helpful in coming to see my lathe(s), although if your ever up this way your welcome to come and have a go.

From my own experiance I would say that if you intend to cut threads and you want/need to cut both metric and imperial, then make sure that what your buying comes with any change wheels etc that will enable you to do just that, in fact if you have a good idea of which machine you are likely to buy you can ask the question on this forum, there will probably be a lot of people that know what any particular machine can do.

Bore size is the maximum internal diameter of the spindle, so for instance if the bore is 26mm nothing larger than 26mm will travel through the chuck and go further than the end of the spindle.

Hi Coggy,

Welcome to one of the most friendly and useful forums on the web.

I share your view that buying used can be a big mistake if you don't know what to look for or even worse if you are unable to make a couple of test cuts to check parallelism (sorry if I just made that word up?) and surface finish. A good used lathe should be able to easily and quickly demonstrate both. So an imported new lathe sounds very feasible.

My DB10 is pretty good (now) but is not capable of cutting very accurate imperial threads although it will cut metric ones ok. I have a powered cross feed and think I have used it once, maybe twice so I suppose you can manage without it. Any lathe that you buy will need setting up properly and maybe you could find someone near to you that would be willing to help out, just things like head alignment, adjustment of gibs, tool height etc, it all helps to get good results. Both Jason and Thor produce great results with their chinese lathes, as do many others so don't worry about horror stories from years ago.

My best advice would be to add a post saying where you live and ask if anyone on the forum lives close to you and could spare an hour or so one evening and show you around their lathe and offer ideas/advice.

Gas_Mantle don't get me wrong, for the money my lathe was not terrible, but it wasn't great either. It was cutting a 0.2mm taper over 100mm to start with, correcting it was nightmare as there is no adjustment built in or available, so I then had to sacrifice an old file and bugger about making a scraper, then bluing and scraping for hours until I got a perfect parallel cut.

Can you cut a true 14tpi thread on your lathe? If so how? please share your knowledge I found that to be another big issue to resolve.

The compound slide was running downhill, when I looked at it closely, the ways and gig angles don't match either. All in all it has been a long slow journey to get the lathe doing what it should have been doing out of the box. As the OP has been going on about acheiving great accuracy with his mill in another thread, I doubt evry much that he would be happy with the DB10, unless I was just unlucky?

Ahh ok I haven't drilled joists so not come across that requirement and I suppose being able to remove the chuck easily will be useful should the grinder function be needed.

I have a Chester DB 10, and unless you are absolutely sure you won't need to cut imperial threads in the future then forget it. I had a need (and still do) to cut various BSP threads, both internal and external and had a lot of hassal trying to achieve it with the DB10. The compound slide needed a lot of work to get rid of inaccurate manufacturing faults. Finally, I seem to be chasing backlash every couple of weeks and don't use it that much.

I am sorry but I couldn't make a suggestion as to what would be better, a good used lathe would be ideal but making sure it really is good and accurate is never going to be easy.

Good luck with whatever you choose.

Why? Sorry but I just don't see the need to spend so much time re-inventing a drill, what am I missing?

A good variety of opinions and suggestions for possible uses then, that's reassuring. Pete I would welcom anything useful and relavent to this task. I do take note of the cautions mentioned and would make sure that fire risk and risk of injury or harm is minimised.

Thank you to all contributors,

Ian

Hi,

This is at the moment a theoretical question, I have been given an old hotpoint washing machine (about eight years old) because it has corroded around the door seal and leaks like a good un. The motor does run nicely.

Is there any value in removing the motor for future workshop use? If so do I need to take out all of the wiring and use it as is or can I simply find which wires I can connect straight up to 240v? I realise this will give a single speed by the way but is it worth the effort or do I just give the scrap man a call?

PS I do have a muli-meter and at the moment haven't looked to see if it's brushed or brushless.

Thanks for any opinions on this.

Excellent videos Blowlamp, I must admit that I have used the trial version of MOI and found it very user friendly and very capable, in fact it was the only cad package that I could produce a tube with various internal diameters.

The one thing that lets it down in my opinion, is a lack of tutorials (unless I have missed something?)

Wow that looks big, what diameter is the flywheel Neil?