Sunday, April 8, 2012

7 x 10 lathe

I finally got a chance to get into my studio and play with my newest addition of equipment... a metal lathe. I've been considering buying this piece of equipment for many years and finally decided to go with the Harbor Freight 7 x 10 because with a 20% off coupon, it's pretty affordable and accurate enough for what I plan to do. Now, I have already and plan to continue tweaking this machine but it does come pretty much ready to go. I was deciding between this and Grizzly's 7 x 12 model but again the 20% coupon combined with the Harbor Freight in town having the lathe in stock saved me over two hundred dollars.

I just turned some hard carving wax today to make sure I'm capable of doing what I had planned on - making heavier duty shaft bearings for the eskimo kisser series - and it worked!! I'm sure I'll find plenty of other uses as well... making really thick-walled tubing will be great for rivet-spacers! The great thing is that I can carve the wax and then cast or just turn the actual metal I plan to use...great to have have options!



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