pkocustom Posted July 27, 2004 Report Share Posted July 27, 2004 Hello to everyone I'm about 5 minutes new to this site. It looks great! I have been trying to build a small lathe for building slip floats for quite a long time now and I'm having no luck. I did manage to build one using a small desk top fan motor and some Dremel parts but that broke a while back, it wasn't that good anyway! My question is does anyone have any plans(parts list) or know of a small lathe that can be chucked with a small 1/4" Jacobs chuck. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clemmy Posted July 27, 2004 Report Share Posted July 27, 2004 Just do a Google search for " mini lathe jacobs " and you'll find info on do-it yourself, modifying mini lathes to accept jacobs chucks and mini-lathes that come with them, all in the first 10 results! (I did to try to help you, and there were so many nice results I didn't know what would best work for your application) hope this helps! Clemmy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pkocustom Posted July 28, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 28, 2004 Thank you very much for the tip :!: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr B Posted July 29, 2004 Report Share Posted July 29, 2004 Check out the Harbor Freight web site. they have a lot of them. Also check out www.rodbuilding.org and do a search for lathes you will get many hits. They use them for turning down cork grips. Mr B Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redg8r Posted July 29, 2004 Report Share Posted July 29, 2004 I built something similar to what your describing. I found an old electric weedeater for 10 bucks at a thrift store. it had a 1/4" threaded shaft which made it easy to chuck up (i used couplers & pins) I added on a tailstock using a 7/8" od. 1/4" id. bearing with a live end. My wife works in food & wine and accumulates alot of wine corks, I shape em down for floats for my son. If you could clamp down a var speed drill with an added tailstock like described above, you could get away with something like that too. If you want a quality tool, look around the web for "pen lathes" these are made for small parts like ink pen barrels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigZ Posted August 12, 2004 Report Share Posted August 12, 2004 You might want to check out the Unimat1 Classic, it's small and it has TONS of tools on it. My buddies dad is a model train junkie and he would die without the machine. Mill, drill, lathe, disc sander, jigsaw, it does everything..and it's only 300 bucks. They make a basic wood lathe that's a lot cheaper too, but I am sure you could cut more accurately with the mill type cross slides and a fixed cutter. For small scale work the little unimat machine is pretty amazing. I wouldn't cut steel with it but...it's worth a look and would probably be great for making floats. Plus it is pretty small and easily portable. http://www.morrisandgreen.com/tl0006_detail.html Good Luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
