Book on lathe operation ?

Ketan, no offence taken mate. It's all good.

I was 10 years old in 1967 and the old man had me using the Drummond to make wooden bowls and fireplace pokers as Christmas gifts for mum and the grandparents. No belt guards no safety switches other than the wall outlet no nothing. Haha. Would be called child abuse today.

Pete

Edited By Hopper on 19/06/2022 22:57:46

You need to be careful with utube, some of it is good, some of it is frankly rubbish. Lots of it takes 30 minutes to tell you what you could read in a book in 5 minutes, and of course you can take the book into the workshop

Yes read books. Yes watch youtube etc. But put a piece of soft material in the chuck & take gentle cuts.

By all means before this, look at videos of operations of a lathe. But with a little & gentle trial & error you will find out how easy it is to turn a piece of metal.

It is a great hobby to delve into & as long as you take care with the safety side of things, you will get a feeling of satisfaction from your efforts.

I would recommend you look up things like using a lathe on youtube. You will soon see what you need to do without buying books from folk hoping to sell a product.

This in no way is knocking any of the editors on this site. I am sure their books are great. Never read any, so do not know. Just take it easy & you will reap the benefits from it.

If you want to see some good youtube video's then look up Jason B. He has some great vids on turning metal.

Just don't look up my steviegtr channel as it gets a mediocre response from this forum.

Regards.

Steve.

There is some good stuff on tube, e.g., Joe Pieczinsnsky. However, at least one channel repeatedly shows videos of the author using his hands as brake pads to stop both lathe and drilling machine chucks from turning after switching off. Potential for serious injuries.

Just be careful with copying what you see or are told.

That's the difference between YouTube and commercially published books: any numpty can set up his own YouTube channel and pass on whatever guff he likes. To get a book on lathes or model engineering commercially published, the author first has to prove his training, experience, knowledge and competence to the publisher before they will think about putting money into printing the book. Then the book is edited by someone with similar or higher levels of technical knowledge to make sure it is correct. There is none of that filtering and double checking on YouTube.

For every competent Joe Pie or Tubal Cain (the Second) on YouTube there is a dozen half-baked beginners who have set up a channel to pass on their ignorance. Some are so ignorant they are ignorant of how ignorant they are. But if you buy any commercially published book on lathework or model engineering, you can rest assured the author knows his stuff. Some are better than others, but all are highly competent.

A member here gave me a copy of "The amateurs lathe by Sparey" (forgive me I can't remember the members name).

It has been a great help even if it is a little dated most of the information still applies.

I have also picked up some very useful information on U tube but you need to know which are are the ones that give the correct information.

+1 for Mason's book "Using the Small Lathe".

I have found that some of the other books mentioned here are available through the public library. Unfortunately, I did find that some of the ideas within these books were either outdated or simply didn't apply in my case, eg, one of the "ancients" is all about the Myford - which I don't have. Mason's book also assumes the Myford lathe, but a lot of the information therein is generic and therefore applicable to any other lathe.

My suggestion is therefore to try the library before buying.

Regards,

Peter G. Shaw

p.s To Ketan. I well remember in my very early forays into this subject having to ask a work colleague what milling was! Such was my ignorance.

+2 for Mason

Rod

The essential thing is to learn and understand the basic principles. This is where the books come in, to learn the basics. One book may show pictures of a particular machine, but it works according to the same principles as most other lathes, The details become apparent as skills develop.

You learn to fasten a belt before running, otherwise your trousers tend to fall down, and you fall over, and are embarrassed, if not actually injured.!. .

The detail is knowing what does what on the machine that you actually have. (On one make of machine "up" may do one thing, on another make it may do the reverse, or something completely different. )

This is where being familiar with the machine comes in.. But first things first.

Two of the first things that I first learned were that putting on a cut removed the same amount of metal from the other side as well, so the diameter decreased by twice as much as I expected.

The next thing was learning how to turn a handwheel consistently, with one hand taking over from the other, to produce a consistent feed rate..

Learning the effects of changing the feed rate become apparent as you learn how to feed steadily.

My instructor then taught me how to grind a tool and to set it on centre height.

Becoming expert in setting up changewheels for screwcutting or power feeds can wait until you have a better understanding of what the machine does, how it does it, and how you operate it.

Once these basic skills have been mastered, you can extend the boundaries of your knowledge.

Take the time to learn, the clever stuff comes afterwards!

Howard