lautard´s octopus

Hi

Has anyone built Lautard´s octopus ? I had the drawings at one time and I have the casting.

Cheers

Hi Peter

Nope. Got most if not all his drawings, no castings. No great interest in that item. Almost finished building his t & c grinding jig, using castings supplied by a fellow club member who had given up on it and he had no drawings. Only found one extraordinary error in the drawings, involves the toolholder. Otherwise, good.

John

Nothing here ? Or perhaps drop him a line?

I was curious as to what this might be so:-

Octopus webpage

John

Thanks. Is he still alive ? It looks as if nothing has been changed since 2013.

Cheers

I don't honestly know, Peter, but the site says it was last updated a year ago and it gives a contact email address.

Hi Peter, This may be of help in your search: The American magazine "Home Shop Machinist" regularly advertised and marketed Lautard's many books. A quick e-mail to them will, I think lead you to what you are looking for. By now, he may well be dead but HSM will still have some information, I'm sure.

Happy hunting! Cheers.

.

Likewise … and particularly intrigued by this little ‘teaser’ …

Besides detailed drawings, machining instructions and how-to-use info, several ‘extras’ are included, like how to make a lathe sub-faceplate that thinks it’s a magnetic chuck. The "power supply" costs about $2, and it works on ferrous and non-ferrous materials alike - this info alone could be worth the whole price of the drawings!

[sorry about the font change … I just copied and pasted]

MichaelG.

The plans appear to be available from Plough Book sales in Australia:

http://www.ploughbooksales.com.au/005582.htm

lautard.com says it was updated a month ago and appears to be extant. It has ordering details.

Right on the front page of the website **LINK** it shows that the site was updated in May this year. It also shows two email addresses, one for orders and one for technical questions. So it appears that Guy is still very much in business.

Soon after moving to Vancouver in 1994, I called Guy up to find out where I could purchase his books.

He invited me over for coffee and I spent a pleasant few hours in his kitchen chatting about metalwork and model engineering. I left with copies of his 3 bedside readers and a slimmer volume entitled "Hey Tim, I gotta tell ya...." all very reasonably priced at the time.
The books make for pleasant reading, and I still page through them occasionally for inspiration, but I don't think they deserve the almost cult-like status they seem to have achieved in certain quarters.

Clive

The books are no longer available new but I think at least one is around as a PDF.

they are in plough books list but not showing any stock as I would like a set as well.cant find the PDF one where is it?

Edited By bernard towers on 23/06/2022 22:08:34

Bernard,

It may be worth looking at this thread from another forum: **LINK**

https://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/forum/general/1874266-third-machinist-bedside-reader-free-download

… there are some ‘warnings from the wise’ included there.

MichaelG.