Freehand metal turning

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Ttrees

Iroko loco!
Joined
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Hello folks
After reading a few recent posts here, it seems that this place looks jolly too :)
I was thinking about posting this some time ago, but never dared rile up the metal forum dwellers.
To top this off, I was thinking of rigging something like this up on my wood lathe.
The mouse started spinning the cog when I saw this...

Enough talkin from me, here is the Turnado video.
What ya'll think?... looks easy to make :)

[youtube]Xs8XZ8X1I-g[/youtube]

Tom
 
Interesting - please let us know how you get on. I have done freehand metal turning using a tool rest, rather like using a scraper for wood turning. If you vary the angle of presentation of the tool a "sweet spot" can be found where it cuts nicely without chattering. My favourite tool to use is a curved bearing scraper.
 
I will indeed post back with my results, but that will be a long while yet, as I have a few projects on the go first.
The tailstock on my cheap lathe needs some work to get it to line up with the head accurately,
and I need to buy chucks for either end to drill out on center.

I recently bought a huge old rusty file that would do the job I think, but that's probably the easy bit.
I would love to see Sawdust vs Manglitters setup as we have the same machine.

Thanks
Tom
 
That's a really neat idea, It would be interesting to see it done on a wood lathe. I imagine everything has to be very rigid for the tool not to catch and pull in.
 
Very interesting!

If, like me, you prefer your wood and metalworking to be done the nineteenth century way, using a cross slide etc still feels a bit of a cheat. :)

Old books on lathe work illustrate a wide range of specially shaped tools which cut metal with a scraping action much more familiar to a woodturner. I should add that it's a method suited to a slow, treadle powered lathe and I would not suggest messing about poking hand held tools into something with a two horsepower motor attached.

However, I posted one of my first attempts back in 2014, here

post886529.html#p886529

IMG_1385_zps203768a1.jpg


This was mostly done with an engineer's scraper, as mentioned above by rxh, but I have also experimented with the even more historic "heel tool".
 

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