How To Turn Wood On A Metal Lathe

Joined Feb 13 2012.

How to turn wood on a metal lathe. If the workpiece is held rigidly the pivot pin can help prevent chatter too. The lathe has two ends on it the headstock and the tailstock. Some woodturners like to use a very small spindle lathe to turn.

Put that guard on select the direction of the rotation and then turn on the lathe. You may struggle to fit a cross slide and tool holder. The only additional tooling youll need is driving head stock center and a tool rest.

If you plan to turn wood using turning chisels the tool rest is required. The simple answer is yes. Using a wood lathe to turn metal may result in chatter.

The headstock is the end where the motor is or where the lathe will get its power from. With certain tropical hardwoods you will want to cover the ways with paper or plastic and make sure that you clean up any lathe chips right away because the wood cells contain sand. You cant use the same cutters though.

It helps to use a pivot pin in the toolrest to lever the tool into the work. However you should not attempt to turn metal on a wood lathe. Metal turning is often high torque lower speed.

Metal lathes have chucks as well as face plates that will hold wood between centers All those are part and parcelfor Both metal and wood lathes. You can turn wood on a lathe made for turning metals. Interestingly along with metals you can use metal lathes to cut through wood pieces as well.