Mini-Lathe

rev. 1-12-2025

I'm kind of a shop junky. I use my tools a lot, but yes, by normal standards I'm not the average credit card sailor.

I built a metal lathe in junior high school from washing machine parts, a few things I cast, and a few things from the hardware store. It vaguely resembled a Uni-mat, and it turned out some bicycle and skateboard parts. A few things for work. However, it was non-standard and wore out 30 years ago. I've been wanting to replace it, but they're expensive. I learned a lot of good drill press and hole saw hacks to get around it when making the odd bushing. But I just wanted one, and now I'm retired, basically, so why not?

 

I settled on an 8x16 lathe from Vevor. The reviews were mixed, some saying that it could do some good work after some adjustments, tuning, and slight modifications. Others said it was a boat anchor that couldn't do shit. After about four hours of adjusting, tweaking, tiny changes, and testing, I'm firmly in camp one. I think it is going to be just swell.

 

 

 Normally I hate unboxing photos. So typical of You Tube. But hauling it around to the basement entrance in the snow and then opening the plywood crate really reminded me of the "special award" scene in "A Christmas Story." I kept saying in my head "Careful! It's fragilee."

 

They ship them loosely assembled. If you can't adjust and tune a lathe, you are going to be disappointed. Since I built my last one from washing machine parts, and have some practice on real machines, tuning it up was just a few hours of plesant tinkering. The only real "fix" was re-grinding the tailstock slide, which was botched at the factory, but that took only minutes and not it is tight. I added a few spacers and washers here and there, and a few shims where they were needed. Now it seems to turn plastic, aluminum, and steel to a pretty good finish and precision, with minimal fuss. Another problem some people have, judging from the you tube videos, is that they don't use cutting fluid. Well, that's just a mistake on a lathe or mill unless you are working plastic. Technically, you don't need it, but you get a better finish and precision with it. I use a water/oil emulsion type by Anchor Lubes. A spray bottle is all you need. Flood systems are for mills and for CNC production environments (the flush helps move the chips to a collection point).

My Scan wall unit base is perhaps not the sturdiest, so I mounted it on a 1-inch marine ply sub-base and used backing plates inside. I weighs about 85 pounds, I think. Not too hard to pick up.

 

There is a wood lathe I use on the bench to the left, (hanging on the wall in storage at the moment), so I have a handy switched outlet (curiously, the wood lath does not have a switch).

 

 I got a set of carbide insert tools to go with it. They seem good, with enough shapes for most things. Several boring bars and parting tool was included, as well as right and left cut tools, several radiuses, and threading tips. They work well. I have some HSS tool stock, so I can grind a few custom tools for thimbles and pulleys. I had to make a set of shims to go under the tools, of course, to get them to the correct height. Just a standard thing that perhaps some of the buyers didn't anticipate. I remember some complaining that they should have come with and they they didn't have shim stock. Whiners. 

I've heard complaints about the slide gibbs on the Vevor machines, but they were actually pretty good. Perhaps eventually I will make a new set from brass, but that's down the road. Meanwhile, they adjust up nice and snug with no wobble. A little more friction than I like, but we'll see how the bed in.

The run out on the chuck is about 0.005. I'm not going to work over it. The spindle bearings came snug with no meaningful runout. I'll have to check the lube and adjustment after a few hundred hours.

At one point I was experimenting on a stub of thick walled aluminum tubing, and it finally just folded up. It seems I had turned the wall thickness down to 0.010 inches, which was OK, but 0.005 inches was too little. But that is pretty impressive, to me. That's thin.

I made a small mistake in not getting a compound slide. I read the description wrong. But the plus side is better rigidity, so on an inexpensive lathe, maybe it's just as well. The are other ways to make champers, and long tapers are better turned by off-setting the tailstock.

Which reminds me. I did have to alight the tailstock alignment. There is a mechanism, but it is clunky, and I will probably pull it apart and clean it up when I need it.

I got a set of carbide insert tools to go with it. They seem good, with enough shapes for most things. Boring bars too, which seem to work well. I have some HSS tool stock, so I can grind a few custom tools for thimbles and pulleys. I had to make a set of shims to go under the tools, to get them at the correct height. Just a standard thing that perhaps some of the buyers didn't anticipate. I remember some complaining that they should have come with and they they didn't have shim stock. Whiners.

I did some test drilling from the tailstock. No problems. I did purchase a chuck for that (Morse #2 taper).

 

I turned aluminum, steel, and plastic. All good. The surface finish kept improving as I learned what each material liked with these tools. No chattering and nice long chips, often many feet long, even with steel.

The motor and speed controls seem good. Enough power, and I didn't notice bothersome bogging down with any depth of cut that made sense. The power feed works fine. I did not play with threading yet. I'm sure I'll mostly used taps and dies. But it does come with change gears.

I've got a few small boat projects in mind. I'll knock those out after it gets warm enough to go sailing (the snow needs to melt). After that ... no idea.Did I really need this? No. Do you? Probably not. But it's a bit of fun.

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Later, after dinner, making a quick test jig, and grinding a cutter for 1/4-inch radius grooves....

One of my first projects is to be some wheel thimbles for my shroud tensioners. The Dyneema line is secured around a pin through two sharp-edged stainless plates. Chafe has been an issue, and the small radius of the pin is a concern. I could use a conventional thimble, but it would not center the line on the pin and thimbles can cut the rope. A wheel thimble solves both problems. I hacked this out of a bit of cutting board, so it is crude, but it proved the jig and the groove cutter. The cutter, BTW, was one I ground when I was 13, a full 50 years ago. It was still razor sharp and just right. I think it was originally for a bearing groove.

The grooves are intentionally deeper than a pulley, to keep the rope in place and to protect from chafe. The width is wrong--this was just a quick test. This is probably the correct width for the pin on the boat, but I need to measure.

It's working! It was so easy. I could make 10 of these in 30 minutes, each identical.