Saturday 3 September 2016

Drill Lathe!


First of all, what do you think of my face shield? xD 
The army helmet was a prop used in a movie my brother and I made along time ago and the perspex was salvaged from the top of screwdriver set case. Remember, safety never takes a vacation!
So I needed a lathe for one of my next projects however lacking the funds to purchase one, I decided to make my own. I'd had a drill laying around in my shop for quite some time and I finally got to scratch the itch and turn it into something useful! Fortunately it's a corded drill rather than a battery powered one, although the motor will eventually burn out, it will take a lot longer than if it were battery powered. I started with a couple of designs on paper then took to the nets to gather some more ideas. I found a video by Izzy Swan who's video on how to make a cheap lathe was very useful:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwE_2Owp3fA

I had planned a rather extensive build write-up for this project however the technology gods had other ideas.. my phone broke (I had an LG G4 which has gone into the boot-loop malfunction. Apparently nearly all G4s will encounter the issue at some point. If you've had a similar problem LG are offering a solution, read more about it here) and I lost all my build processes pictures. So unfortunately I won't be able to do a build write up for this project. I have, however made a video showing the lathe in action!

The video shows me trying the lathe out for the very first time and so I'm only really testing to see if everything works properly (making sure the motor has enough torque to continue spinning while I'm applying pressure to the wood ect.) My chisel set is yet to arrive in the post so I had to use an old rusty one I found in our garage.

In the future I would love to buy my own lathe, but for now my "drillathe-o-matic" will serve as a great starting point and suits my current requirements. Overall I'm very happy with the way it turned out and if you too need a lathe and don't have the budget to purchase one, I would definitely recommend giving this little project a go!

Watch the video here:



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