Thanks for the suggestion about making a puddle! If you want to get really fancy, Starrett sell a drill guide to help it get started, and also a branded water bottle to help with the cooling. The wood idea sounds like it would work just as well though.

Adventures with a Very Small Lathe I imagine Starrett has a tool for any job :-)

To possibly help with this idea, how about a decently sized counterbore lined with wax in the piece of wood too, so you could have the puddle as part of the drill guide?

@@rok1475 True statement. I found out yesterday Starrett a .001" dial indicator with 5" of travel! Model 25-5041 would look sweet on the bed of my lathe.

What works for cooling is a plastic 1 or 1,5 liter water bottle in which you make a tiny hole with a hot needle. Fill the bottle with water, open the cap and aim the very thin waterjet that comes out at your drill. Close the cap to stop the water. For people without a drill stand, Action.com sells a set of 6 diamond drills complete with a guide that can be attached to a flat surface with a suctioncup. Works with glass and ceramic tiles too. www.action.com/nl-nl/p/werckmann-diamantborenset-/

For me granite was pretty accessible. There are several kitchen worktop suppliers nearby who sell offcuts, but the nearest metal supermarkets is an hour and a half drive away. I'm pretty sure an aluminium flat bar does the job just as well though, as it's almost exactly the same density. Steel would be great, but I would no longer be able to even lift it.

Good point, I'll keep that in mind in case I need one in a hurry.

I managed it the other way round 😁

and vive versa... with a little luck even the name its to the machine... ;)

Grandpa would approve. But don't tell the living. They won't understand.

Excellent idea, and in the last will will a sentence saying "I want to be buried together with my lathe". ;-)

Cool, glad to have been some inspiration. Let us know how your project goes. :)

Glad you enjoyed it! My accent had been around a bunch of places, but I was born in Brum. :)

That sounds like it will make one hell of a base for your lathe. I don't even want to think how you'd move them around.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe They're on a rolling cabinet. But I fear that I now need to upgrade the casters :-)

Nice idea! Sounds like I need to keep an eye on my local monumentalist, and see what they throw out. I'm starting to think of all kinds of good ideas.

Thanks, that totally makes sense. I know I should have cleared it as soon as I heard it break off, but snapping the cores off in advance makes even more sense. Thanks again!

Good idea, thanks for the suggestion!

The Proxxon is going to be quite tricky to level, as each end of the bed only has one single bolt hole, and I really don't want to mess up the lovely casting with more. During this project it was clear that the ground surface of the lathe base was pretty flat (especially compared with the Chinese CJ0618 Lathe), so bolting it straight to the flatish plate gave me a pretty level starting point. I'm worried that shimming the corners might reduce the solidity of the overall setup, even it if does remove a bit of twist. The idea with the CJ0618 is that I get to try things out for the first time, as I'm not too paranoid about damaging it, so the CJ0618 will be the first I attempt to level.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe You never know how much it will take until you set the level on it and check the numbers. Don't know much about the PD 250 but it seems to have a pretty substantial bed (compared to the mini and poorly machined feet). It may not have much twist over its length. Not sure shims would be that much of an issue. I'd probably use brass shim stock at least to try it. Another thought would be to use some ground flat bar wide enough for 2 bolts each under the lathes single mountings and shim that instead¿ It will raise it up a bit but won't loose too much stability and gives it a wider foot print. Good Luck and looking forward to see what ever you come up with, or need.

@@pjhalchemy I guess the first thing to do is try and measure the twist. Once I know what it is, I'll have a better idea of whether I need to do anything.

I haven't done any formal measurement or comparison, but the machine feels way nicer, and I've had no chatter since I set the lathe up this way.

Could you pour an appropriately sized concrete slab?

Not a bad idea. I was thinking more about the flatness on the granite. A concrete block would still give me the vibration absorption. My shed floor is already concrete. My next move will be to make some leveling feet for under the legs and use my machine level to even everything up and see how that goes. I figured out how to calibrate my Starrett level on the weekend. I can now put a .0015" feeler gauge under one side and the bubble moves one full division on the site glass. Man those things are accurate.

Sounds like a good fit, though I think cheaper options should also be considered if granite is hard to come by.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe Granite suppliers are abundantly available in my area. However, MDF is also a stable and easy to work with material.

Have you considered a leather washer?

I only used the milling machine because I wanted to be completely sure the holes would be dead straight. I'd never worked with these bits before, so I wasn't confident that I could drill straight with a hand drill.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe yeah, that was a good choice. they're tricky to start in the right spot with just the hand drill (I used a piece of wood with a hole, clamped in the right place to get the hole started), but I don't know how straight the holes are when drilled by hand. My back was also aching pretty good by the end, if I'd had a milling machine or pillar drill that would have gotten the job done I would have used that, smoke em if you got em

So you were the one that got away from the Hatton Garden job then?

I think it'll work for any lathe where extra weight or rigidity are required. You'll probably need a very hefty slab to improve a lathe that big, I'd guess.

I can already imagine the comments I'd get if I did that! ;)

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe it's probably more true than the $30 one from harbor freight...

@@trollforge exactly 😁 I'm not looking for surgical grade tolerances in my workshop 😁 that would be much more accurate than half my China made machines and tooling 😂

I bought 2 large granite floor tiles in a part box, so they were very cheap. Just looked at a dozen or so using the shop lights to find those with the least surface ripple ( all were pretty flat though, just looked to find first two with nothing at all imperfection wise) and took them. Then took flexible adhesive and mounted one on a base of plywood, and use it as a surface block. The other is on the kitchen as a cutting block. the plywood makes it easier to handle, as now I have something to hold onto, and using wet or dry is fine, marine grade ply with a coat of enamel top and bottom. 450x450mm tiles, plenty big enough for my small needs, and I just use a drop of dishwashing liquid and a bit of water to stick the sheet of wet and dry waterpaper to the top, and a spray of water in use to clean the paper of debris. WD40 also on the very fine grit, to keep the metal from corroding as it is taken off.

Granite is definitely not the cheapest option, and there are probably very cost effective ways to make a sturdy base from cheaper material, but as I could get hold of an off-cut pretty easily, I thought I'd try it out. The added bonus is that it looks really great. :)

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe I've also been looking at casting a concrete base and then either encasing it with wood or sealing the surface well. One wouldn't want concrete dust getting into the works!

@@jrkorman I've done a bit of work with concrete, and I think using a few good coats of concrete sealer and then perhaps a coat of paint should keep the dust well under control. The challenge for me would be getting the surface flat enough.

Ha! That's weird! I've just read your comment after leaving an almost identical one myself.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe Look at local monumentalists for reject granite slabs. Either one with a spelling mistake or one which was chipped. If it has engraving use that side as the base, and fill it with body filler to get the surface smooth, then cover with a sheet of felt or rubber. Concrete simply make your mould out of ceramic tiles coated with a thick coat of floor wax and polished shiny. Use a lot of reinforcing, preferably chicken wire, and when mixing the concrete use a superplasticiser so your water content is low, but the plasticiser makes it really easy to pour and prevents cracking. Add chopped glass mat as well, and after you have removed the mould simply polish the flat surfaces to get rid of the tile edges. Surface protection is just then a case of paint a few coats of polyurethane brick sealer on it to keep it dust free.

Thanks Randy, glad you approve.

I use a small (12x12 inch) granite floor tile for use when building models. If you support it well you can get under 0.005" of flatness which is fine for Model Railroading work! :) As a benefit, most glue and such comes off quite easily!

Ades Workshop.

I'll keep an eye out for granite chopping boards in future. Sounds like they may be a bit more affordable.

edgeeffect ask your local countertop shops, they throw away off-cuts the size of small table when making L-shaped countertop piece. If you are polite they will let you take them for free or cut them to size for labor cost.

@@rok1475 Since writing my comment but before reading your reply.... I did indeed checkout my local worktop (countertop) shop, and they do have a load of off-cuts to throw away, I obviously wasn't polite enough because they DO want payment, but not that much. :)

Thanks Colin! I'd love a splash guard, but all the prices I've seen locally have been really high. Perhaps I'll add a new project to the queue to make a guard for myself! :)

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe Agree they're expensive, mine cost about $250 AU & I contemplated making my own but when I weighed up its cost against materials, available tools, welding, powder coating & time, buying the Proxxon one was cheaper.

Adventures with a Very Small Lathe the splash guard and chip tray can be made of plastic and just glued to granite. If you fancy it to be removable drill some horizontal holes into edges of the granite and set small studs in those holes with epoxy to hold the pieces of acrylic, lexan, polycarbonate or whatever you can find.

As a KZfaqr one of my challenges is making sure I can still get my camera into the right position, so I think most standard splash guard designs wouldn't work for me. It's a problem I'll have to think about carefully.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe Fwiw I've had 1 mm stainless sheet metal sheared and a few other items made up at a commercial heating and air conditioning shop for quite reasonable prices. The U.K. could be different of course, but a basic drawing for a tray the lathe sits on and a back splash bolted to it and the head stock end might be worth trying at one of those shops fairly local to you? They have the equipment, skills and knowledge to do this type of work pretty efficiently.

Danke schön. :)

It's important to understand the difference between a surface's levelness and its flatness. When people talk about levelling a lathe, they are usually talking about removing twist from the bed; in other words making sure that the plane of the bed is as flat as possible. For most people it doesn't matter too much how level the lathe is. It shouldn't really matter much how level your floor is, but you will need to make sure your table has adjustable feet so it sits solidly on all of them and doesn't wobble. The top of the table will need to be flat, or when you bolt the lathe down, the bed will be twisted. As for tolerance, that really depends on what you'll be doing with the machine. A lathe cannot be too flat, but if the parts you are working on don't have fine tolerances then you can put up with a small amount of twist. As a rough guide, if you put your lathe on your table with the metal bottom of the lathe directly on the table, there shouldn't be any gaps between the lathe and the table that you can detect with a thin sheet of paper. If there are, then either the bottom of the lathe isn't flat, or the table isn't flat. Working out which is an entire topic on its own, but if you bolt the lathe down when there are gaps, then the bolts will cause the lathe bed to twist. This topic is way too large to cover in a single comment, but I hope you have enough to start with and dig up more.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe thank you, that is very helpful. And makes me want to cry, because my extremely heavy metal table I put together from scrap metal parts probably isn’t anywhere near as flat as I’d like. Maybe I can fix that by bolting a piece of granite top like you did to it? Thanks again, your channel is very helpful for people like me as well as the old hands too. A rare skill to be able to appeal to such a wide range of people.

I get that a lot, and it's inspired me to learn about river fishing.

That would be awesome, but my mill doesn't have a permanent home at the moment, so I need to be able to move it around easily. It'll have to wait.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe when you find that spot for the permanent home, I'm sure the mill will be happy to have the same treatment as the lathe. (I'm also sure your mill is currently very jealous of your lathe)

Increasingly the rigidity has a number of effects, and better accuracy is great, but not my primary reason. Increased rigidity means I can take much deeper cuts without causing chatter, which makes work much faster. There are still quite a lot of other factors which affect accuracy on this lathe, but most of the projects I've done haven't hit the accuracy limits yet, so I'm not sure how much this upgrade has improved the accuracy in practice. It has allowed me to get more done, and means I have to suffer less from the screaming sound the cutters make when they chatter really badly.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe Thanks for the answer! That is, you did not check the accuracy characteristics of the lathe after this modification. And the rigidity itself (deviation of some parts of the lathe at a given force action) have you checked? And about the increase in engine power (in some of your videos you mentioned this), I am interested in your opinion, please.

@@user-el5vp3et1t The only measurements I have done are the increase in depth of cut I can make without causing excessive chatter. Before the granite base a 0.1mm cut was the maximum practical depth for most materials. After the mod I was able to take between 0.2mm and 0.3mm depending on the material. I could probably take deeper cuts if the motor had more torque. It feels like motor power is now the limiting factor rather than the rigidity of the bed.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe Currently, the Chinese sell a lot of DC electric motors on Aliexpress with a capacity of 200 - 350 - 680 watts per 24 - 48 - 220 volts. Their diameter is 66 - 77 mm. That is, they can even be installed in the lathe housing. So I am interested in what power the DC motor now after your modification could be used according to your estimates?

@@user-el5vp3et1t I'm concerned that other parts of the lathe may not be suited to a stronger motor. The headstock is hollow aluminium with some steel plate - not nearly as solid as the iron casting used in Chinese mini-lathes. Too much torque might bend the housing permanently, so I'm not planning a bigger motor.

30mm thick, 600mm long and 350mm deep. Well spotted on the thickness. My notes tell me that the maximum distance between bolt centres was 349mm to fit the mounting, but I set my distance a couple of mm closer together to make sure they didn't rub against the casting. I set the lathe far enough back that the handles didn't stick out over the edge, and I generally line up the edge of the base with the edge of my bench. It seems to work just fine.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe By the way, it seems that the QCTP has been redesigned. The two gibs are gone and the widening in the bottom of the mounting hole is not there anymore. A little disappointing, since I planned to copy your improvement of the screw.

@@paullehmor982 The gib based design isn't all that great, so I'm not sorry to hear it's been changed. The lack of pocket at the base of the toolpost shouldn't change things too much. You will still want a shoulder next to the top of the compound, but now it just needs to be machined to a slip fit in the toolpost, then the rest of the stud should have more clearance. It should still be able to ensure the toolpost rotates cleanly, and stays stable when adjusting it.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe You are right. But the stud must be wide enough at the base to sit properly against the compound.The hole in the tool post is 8.4 mm at the base and 13 mm at the top. One could also turn it upside down.

​@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe I'm expecting to receive a Nero Assoluto granite base in a couple of weeks. I bought a Milwaukee 10 mm diamond drill. Do you remember what rpm you used to drill the holes? I guess you used a 8 mm drill.

Absolutely. The lathe is now much less vulnerable to vibration, and I now find that I'm limited by the torque output of the motor long before I have issues with rigidity. Would definitely recommend this for any small lathe.

I think that's beyond my skills at the moment.

My knuckles will probably heal. ;) I wanted to ensure the handles stayed inside the base because knocking them might move the lathe between sensitive operations, or worse they might be hit hard enough to damage the machine.

Yeah, I think there would have been advantages, but it was impossible to lay out the positions of the holes on the hard polished granite. I would almost certainly have made cleaner holes.

@@AdventureswithaVerySmallLathe Anytime I need to lay out and drill holes on a finished surface that has fairly low precision requirements I'll usually apply a layer of cheap masking tape in the general location then mark the hole C/L on the tape. Drill the holes then just pull the masking tape off. No pen or pencil marks where they'd show, and anything the masking tape can stick to can be marked as much as you'd like. Painted interior walls are another place I'll use it. Stone drilling requires the water cooling as you did. Using a ring of old school window glazing putty as a dam maybe 2" in diameter keeps the water in a central area with more of it to help with the cooling. With the stone supported on those 2" x 4"s a small dish could be used under the stone to catch the water and stone slurry as the drill breaks through. I bolted my Emco 5" swing lathe down to a 1" x 12" x 27" mild steel plate. It made a large difference in adding rigidity and how accurately the lathe could cut. But even stone can flex on a wooden bench. Supporting it on 3 of the airy points like surface plates are may or may not be needed depending on the results you see happening in the future.

@@turningpoint6643 I don't think stone of that size and thickness will flex. But noticeable heating and cooling may change the lathe accuracy accuracy slightly. In this case i guess, given that it's a cheap little machine made in Chinesia, it shouldn't be too much of an issue. All in all this should be an improvement for certain!

@@jayytee8062 Because of the usual standard wooden floor construction in my shop I have changes in my lathe and can measure the amount of taper it produces with the flexing of the 1" plate under it. Those easily measured changes happen with just a few degrees of temperature or points of humidity throughout the day. Anything that's got wood in it is going to change no matter how well it's sealed. It will happen slower but it's still happening. And my lathe is sitting on a heavy steel bench weighing over 500 lbs fully loaded. A 24" x 36" x 4" thick surface plate can slowly change under it's own weight if the supporting structure under it isn't flat or stable.Those calculated airy support points are recommended for good reasons even with an expensive properly welded steel structure made for surface plates. Yes you may be right, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it did happen. His Proxxon lathe is a long ways from being cheap and Chinesium. For it's size there quite expensive, well made and very accurate if there set up correctly.

@@jayytee8062 Proxxon made in Germania not Chinesia.

Aluminum wouldn't dampen vibrations like granite can. Granite has more weight.

@@MrRatkilr depends how think. You can buy off cuts from ebay half inch think or more.

Robert Underdunk Terwilliger Have you checked the prices of thick aluminum plate before posting your comment? Granite is cheaper than aluminum plate of comparable stiffness. Even a slab of steel is more expensive than granite. And if you ask politely the countertop shops will let you have their off-cuts for free since those small pieces are useless for them. No machine shop will give away a slab of aluminum or steel because they can use that material to make smaller parts.

Du hast total rechts. Es ist sehr hässlich. Ein neues Project für die Liste. :)

OK... aber ,,rechts,, bin ich nicht ! ;))

My videos take a lot of work to produce, and I am working on them with as much time as I have available. I should be able to upload something later this month, so don't go away. :)