CroppyBoy1798
Established Member
So,
Had this lathe the past number of years when I jumped headlong into woodworking (obviously still not knowledgable enough to save my money and buy a decent lathe!
). So, I bought this beautiful piece of 'Karlkraft' engineering! The dream of any aspiring woodturning, these things are hard to come by, in fact, they're so good that I'm sure you've all seen them under several different guises, but still sporting that undoubthful ruggedness and quality.......
.....or, should I say a load of *expletive* :?. Yeah, the thing is basically made out of painted tin! Once you put a work piece between the centres and tighten up the tail stock the machine actually flexes!! Even when the machine is secured to a bench! And I mean flexes!!! you'd want to see the shape it'd take, thus, turning anything longer than a foot or so wasnt worth your while! The base is made out of 1mm sheet profile and the two box section rails are also approx 1mm thick and could bend under downward pressure! The fitting of the tailstock was sloppy in the rails and you never were quite sure if the two centres were in line when you had a workpiece fixed in. Not to mention the thing was all bolted together!
I'm not much of a woodturner anyway, so, I figured I might as well try and set a semi decent purse out of this sows ear and thus went about pulling the lathe asunder (with great pleasure) picking up a lenght of 40mm box section with a 4mm wall thickness. Then, armed with my aldi arc welder (one of the best tools I bought from aldi!!) I constructed my new super strong, and super HEAVY lathe. Like the one one its benche mounted. Ok, my welding skills arent up to scratch but boys was I happy when I got her assembled yesterday and popped a test piece in, even without the machine being fixed down it didnt stir and seemed to run quite smooth without any of the vibration I encounted with the last setup.
Looks somewhat more 'industrial' now. I might try strenghten up the motor housing a bit and also the tail stock as its a little weak I think, but, for now it'll do. Just have to get her cleaned up and maybe a splash of paint!
Had this lathe the past number of years when I jumped headlong into woodworking (obviously still not knowledgable enough to save my money and buy a decent lathe!
). So, I bought this beautiful piece of 'Karlkraft' engineering! The dream of any aspiring woodturning, these things are hard to come by, in fact, they're so good that I'm sure you've all seen them under several different guises, but still sporting that undoubthful ruggedness and quality............or, should I say a load of *expletive* :?. Yeah, the thing is basically made out of painted tin! Once you put a work piece between the centres and tighten up the tail stock the machine actually flexes!! Even when the machine is secured to a bench! And I mean flexes!!! you'd want to see the shape it'd take, thus, turning anything longer than a foot or so wasnt worth your while! The base is made out of 1mm sheet profile and the two box section rails are also approx 1mm thick and could bend under downward pressure! The fitting of the tailstock was sloppy in the rails and you never were quite sure if the two centres were in line when you had a workpiece fixed in. Not to mention the thing was all bolted together!
I'm not much of a woodturner anyway, so, I figured I might as well try and set a semi decent purse out of this sows ear and thus went about pulling the lathe asunder (with great pleasure) picking up a lenght of 40mm box section with a 4mm wall thickness. Then, armed with my aldi arc welder (one of the best tools I bought from aldi!!) I constructed my new super strong, and super HEAVY lathe. Like the one one its benche mounted. Ok, my welding skills arent up to scratch but boys was I happy when I got her assembled yesterday and popped a test piece in, even without the machine being fixed down it didnt stir and seemed to run quite smooth without any of the vibration I encounted with the last setup.
Looks somewhat more 'industrial' now. I might try strenghten up the motor housing a bit and also the tail stock as its a little weak I think, but, for now it'll do. Just have to get her cleaned up and maybe a splash of paint!
