Zyto lathe problem

I rather think that it's just more intuitive for human minds to deal with. Ask yourself why no car steering wheel turns to the left to make the wheel turn right? With your hand on top of the wheel your hand and the carriage will move in the same direction, same as when driving a car.

When my M Type with reverse handwheel was the only lathe I used, it was fine. No problem at all. But I had not used a lathe at all in the previous 20 years or more, so no real residual habit. But once I got the ML7 and went back to the "normal" rotation of handwheel old habits very quickly re-asserted themseslves and now the M-Type catches me out every time.

I agree wholeheartedly, but there is a counter example.

For two centuries after the invention of the ship's wheel, it turned the wrong way. I guess this was to mimic the action of a tiller where moving the arm left, causes the ship to turn right. (Port and Larboard, shipmates.) #

In the Titanic film, I believe the helmsman spins the wheel in the modern direction to avoid the iceberg, which would have crashed the ship straight into it. Pity he didn't, because scraping along the side of the berg caused multiple leaks along the length of the front section that bypassed the watertight bulkheads. If the ship had hit head-on, the bow section would gave been severely damaged, but the ship would probably have stayed afloat.

Titanic isn't a good guide to driving a lathe. Never good to smack the saddle into the headstock!

Dave

# Hope I didn't dream the direction thing, can't find a reference on the internet.

It appears you are right Dave, from a reliable source, the Naval Historical Society. According to them, 1934 was the year British (and thus Commonwealth) ships changed to the modern system of "Port" means the pointy end moves towards Port. They make reference to the blooper in the Titanic movie, set in 1912 when helm rotation should have been bass-ackwards. **LINK**

I never heard of that I must confess. Tiller steering makes just as much intuitive sense as steering wheels if you think about it, because tillers steer the ship by swinging the back in the direction that you push the tiller. That the front turns to the opposite direction is incidental.