Homemade Lathe Tools

I am creating this thread for myself, but also for those newbie model engineers out there who have little experience machining parts, but are in the middle of learning how to use their machines. So is the case with myself, as I acquired a myford ml10 lathe, and have years of experience building things - just not with machining involved. This is something I really want to become proficient at. I am sure this thread will do a lot of good for those out there wanting to get started in this hobby.

Post any photos for tooling which an amateur and newbie could build on their machine, for practice, and for use at a later time down the road. Try to keep the items out of the rocket scientist categories , in regards to skill level, when it comes to building them. I know there are a lot of talented and skilled individuals on this forum, and they all started off the same way as other amateurs, so post photos of tools you made when first started out.

Edited By Jeremy Smith 2 on 05/04/2020 20:22:10

Edited By Jeremy Smith 2 on 05/04/2020 20:23:34

Hi Jeremy,

Not sure if you take MEW but we try to feature tools at all levels in the magazine.

There are plenty on this website if you click the black bar above:

Features---> Article Reprints

and

Workshop ---> Tools

Neil

Hi Jeremy Here are a few bit i made and are useful.

Small angle plate approx 2" x 2" 1" with a 1/2" step with a few useful holes.

Silver steel body cross drilled to suit HSS diamiter with grub screw to hold tool bit.

Small sine bar there is a article in magazine on how to make it.

Angle plate made from a bought cast iron angle plate with lots of useful taped holes etc

Small jack screws for adjustable clamping.

Centers for chuck for tapping or centering. Silver steel hardened and tempered. 

David

Edited By David George 1 on 05/04/2020 21:56:54

You could do worse than make a couple of these toolmakers clamps.

Whilst not entirely lathe work most of the machining could be carried out on the lathe at a pinch although a mill or at least a drill press would be handy. Detailed "how to" on my website:-
*** Journeyman's Workshop ***

John

Look in back numbers of M E W for the two articles (at least ) on making a Tangential Turning Tool.

A very useful tool, and with only face to grind, easy to sharpen.

By hacksawing off the flutes, suitable MT shank drills can be turned, quite literally, into centres.

An extra, double ended (One male, the other female ) centre will be extremely useful for centering work in a Four Jaw Chuck. Bit of a chicken and egg job to get it accurately centred, perhaps?

You can make yourself a tool for turning radii, balls or concaves .

Every one of these projects will add to your store of confidence and knowledge.

Howard

In 20 odd years of having my current centre lathe I've made very little tooling; mainly haven't had the need. What I have made would be irrelevant to the OP anyway. I've bought plenty of tooling, often secondhand, and also made many fixtures that get used for the job in hand and then put aside, or re-purposed.

For the mills I have made simple tooling that get used on a regular basis, but that wasn't the original question.

Andrew

Hi Jeremy,

A tailstock dieholder is very handy when threading small diameter rods.

Thor

Hi Guys,

Here is a picture of a small boring bar that I made recently. It is designed to fit into a 12 mm bore in order to cut several 2 mm wide by 2 mm deep grooves.

This is a family picture of all the parts including the Allen key for the M5 grub screw.

This picture shows the assembled tool.

Looking down from the top. That piece of HSS tool steel is 3 mm square section by 10 mm long.

A close up of the tool bit.

I made this tool to machine the grooves in a labyrinth dust trap for a high speed grinding spindle.

Buying some 1/4" or 6mm square hss tool steel is easy on ebay, and grinding it only needs a humble bench grinder. Then you have the means to produce lots of stuff on your lathe. Perhaps somebody can suggest a list of good books to buy.

This is a tangential lathe tool holder I made for my Unimat.

This is it on its accesory base for hand turning a la "Turnado"

This is a replacement tool holder for my S7 to ensure rigidity and repeatable QCTP mounting.

What a great idea for a thread. I don't have a photo handy but my first big lathe tool project (I'm a novice) was a between centres boring bar for making my Britannia cylinder bores as parallel as I could. I'm sure it will come in useful for any other locomotives I make, but otherwise is probably destined to live in a draw!

A tool that I have made for the lathe is this "centre pump" .

Easy to make and a good practice piece for us beginners. John

My homemade fixed steady and s previous owners rear toolpost dating back to the WW2 era.

Drive dog for between centres turning.

Tangential Tool. Both angles are 12°.

No photo I'm afraid but I made a set of small tool-holders originally for my EW 2.5-inch lathe with its plain clamp, by drilling assorted 1/4-in holes in short pieces of rectangular steel bar, to hold bits ground from broken / worn-out centre-drills, FC3 cutters and the like.

Extra holes, tapped, hold grub-screws to secure the bits.

The bit-holes are gently inclined to give both top rake and some height adjustment, and whilst not a real QC system, with care it can give some of the QC advantages.

Suitably longer versions would also work in a QC tool-post, of course.

Here's some tools I have made.

Rotating tail stock chuck for supporting long thin bars or items not centre drilled.

A spring centre for tapping on the lathe

Here again, made from a blank morse taper.

Tangential turning tools (Mikes workshop)

There is loads of stuff on this site and people are always posting links to other useful sites.

Versatile Dividing Head, ala GH Thomas design but fabricated from steel bar and plate stock welded up. Shown here mounted on the lathe and being used to generate its own indexing plates. 812 holes in all. How could I ever forget?

Edited By Hopper on 07/04/2020 08:16:43

Homemade flycutter seen here boring the hole through middle of homemade fixed steady, which is clamped to homemade four-way toolpost. In the background can be seen the adapted Myford-style cross slide end bracket that allows extra cross slide movement inwards. Very handy on the old Drummond lathe for extra milling capacity.

What size bearing would be best for the rotary tail stock chuck please as I can order the blank taper at the same time. All good ideas keep them coming.

Bob

Edited By BOB BLACKSHAW on 08/04/2020 14:46:06