Do You Have A Lathe? I Need To Talk To You...

[tmenyc]

A certain pen repairer, a person for whom I have immense respect and admiration, has been telling me it's high time I got a lathe, and I'll finally admit to giving it serious consideration.

By way of context, I have been restoring pens on a hobby basis for ten years. I restore and sell, which funds the hobby, but don't/won't do repairs for the public. Over time, the projects finding their way to my shop have been getting increasingly more complex, and the bread-and-butter stuff is being progressively left to others. I have a good half dozen section repairs, barrel repairs, and sac nipple replacements already awaiting attention, and could spend a year on cork replacements alone once I teach myself how to do it. I do have a lot of good tools, including precision tools, since I am also a scale modeler and inherited my late father-in-law's better tools, so am not unfamiliar with doing precision work. In short, not being able to turn down or create a round surface with precision is hampering my growth.

The immediate challenge is making sure I can fit the machine into the space, even after rearranging the space to fit the machine. My wife and I have lived in a 800 sq ft apartment in Greenwich Village since 1978, and it's sadly not getting any larger. The kids are adults and no longer at home (both in larger apartments than they grew up in...) and their shared 12x12 childhood bedroom is now my wonderful and loved shop/sometimes office, where my life outside of the office all happens. Most of my work is done on an old watch-maker's bench, with a raised bench and all the drawers. My photographic setup and fume hood have their own space, but only one can be out at a time. Enough for context.

First, I have questions:

1) which lathe do you have, do you like it, what are its notable strengths and weaknesses? Clearly I won't be buying a major shop lathe; I'll be looking at smaller units that are still capable of any pen job. It would also need to do some metal work, but nothing hardened, for my other hobby.
2) how much room does it actually consume, including space all around it?
3) which attachments do you own and which do you use all the time?
4) what lighting do you use?

Second, I'm looking for a lathe mentor -- someone I can talk with/write to with some frequency while I learn this stuff. Someone within driving distance of New York City would be ideal but not necessary....feel free to volunteer? If local, I'll buy the whiskey.

Many thanks in advance.
Tim

Edited December 15, 2016 by tmenyc

[praxim]

Presumably you have researched the likely suspects, Proxxon, Sherline, Taig, and a variety of similarly capable lathes of Chinese origin. I think you may be able to buy well second hand, where people have started with a small lathe then felt the need to up-size.

 

On your questions, I use a Proxxon PD/230 (current models are 150 or 250 (or 400)) which has enough robustness for small metal work rather than being strictly jeweller size, and has available suitable attachments for radius turning and the like. I have that kit and a 4-jaw chuck for holding odd items but I would not call that vital. Add a quick-change toolpost and the other essential stuff is the various cutting, boring and threading bits. Other stuff I have around it has been less important.

Measurement is important, even where you are fitting bespoke parts you hold rather than churning out standard fittings. Think of a small micrometer or decent electronic calipers and ask someone to put a dial or dial test indicator on their birthdays futures list. In fact, your birthdays and christmases will be solved for years to come.

 

Sherline has a slightly wider range of attachments available, including a dedicated cut-off tool. Chinese lathes make attachments cheaper. A small bench grinder with a soft grit is pretty important for sharpening, shaping or making tools in HSS, or just keep buying them, and a small bandsaw is something you might crave one day.

 

Mine sits in a metal catch tray on a 1200x750 desk. It could fit in a smaller space, especially less depth. It is meant to be moveable so you can use the space for different purposes if you must.

 

For mentoring, there are some good little books around, including one from Sherline that may even be free about the web someplace, and you can just send me the whiskey.

 

[lallin]

tmenyc, on 15 Dec 2016 - 11:50, said:

A certain pen repairer, a person for whom I have immense respect and admiration, has been telling me it's high time I got a lathe, and I'll finally admit to giving it serious consideration.

 

By way of context, I have been restoring pens on a hobby basis for ten years. I restore and sell, which funds the hobby, but don't/won't do repairs for the public. Over time, the projects finding their way to my shop have been getting increasingly more complex, and the bread-and-butter stuff is being progressively left to others. I have a good half dozen section repairs, barrel repairs, and sac nipple replacements already awaiting attention, and could spend a year on cork replacements alone once I teach myself how to do it. I do have a lot of good tools, including precision tools, since I am also a scale modeler and inherited my late father-in-law's better tools, so am not unfamiliar with doing precision work. In short, not being able to turn down or create a round surface with precision is hampering my growth.

 

The immediate challenge is making sure I can fit the machine into the space, even after rearranging the space to fit the machine. My wife and I have lived in a 800 sq ft apartment in Greenwich Village since 1978, and it's sadly not getting any larger. The kids are adults and no longer at home (both in larger apartments than they grew up in...) and their shared 12x12 childhood bedroom is now my wonderful and loved shop/sometimes office, where my life outside of the office all happens. Most of my work is done on an old watch-maker's bench, with a raised bench and all the drawers. My photographic setup and fume hood have their own space, but only one can be out at a time. Enough for context.

 

First, I have questions:

 

1) which lathe do you have, do you like it, what are its notable strengths and weaknesses? Clearly I won't be buying a major shop lathe; I'll be looking at smaller units that are still capable of any pen job. It would also need to do some metal work, but nothing hardened, for my other hobby.

2) how much room does it actually consume, including space all around it?

3) which attachments do you own and which do you use all the time?

4) what lighting do you use?

 

Second, I'm looking for a lathe mentor -- someone I can talk with/write to with some frequency while I learn this stuff. Someone within driving distance of New York City would be ideal but not necessary....feel free to volunteer? If local, I'll buy the whiskey.

 

Many thanks in advance.

Tim

You might want to check with Jake Leventhal of Jake's Pens. In addition to pen repair and sales, Jake also sells pens suitable for pen work. You can find information on his website jakespens.com. There is a page about "Lathes and associated tools for pen repair" . I don't know if he currently has any for sale; but, the page is a good tutorial and the lathes referenced are sized for pen work.

[jaxxon]

Tim I am not recommending anything here just telling you what I use. I too have been restoring, repairing fountain pens for the last 15 to 20 years. I will preface that by telling

you I am 86 years young. I bought this Harbor Freight 7 X 10 Mini Lathe. There are a few more on the market just like it all different names but all come out of China.

This lathe has performed for my needs in an exceptionally good way. Here are the basic accessories I have added to the lathe since I bought it 10 or so years ago.

A set of E25 collets and a #3 Morse Taper collet holder.

Installed the new tail stock lockdown kit.

Installed a digital readout kit that reads in Metric or Inches.

 

The kits came from www.thelittlemachineshop.com in California

With my setup there is nothing in lathe work for the things I do, that I could not accomplish. And with close tolerances too

BTW The lathe sits on a Sears 5drawer rolling shop cart. That makes it pretty portable between my kitchen and the laundry room

Regards,

Jack

[tmenyc]

Many thanks to all three of you -- this is a good start for me!

 

Tim

[ParramattaPaul]

Thinking laterally, you might see if there are am model engineering groups in your area. They are the gents who make model steam engines, tractors and the like from raw materials. They use lathes, milling machines and the like to produce phenomenally detailed miniature marvels of the 19th century. Asked nicely, they could offer some advice about what will most likely meet your needs and may provide tutoring.

[Ron Z]

As Jack has said, the HF Lathe will do most of what you need to do. The Micro-Mark lathe is made by the same company with a larger bed and some upgrades. The Grizzly mini-lathe is made by Seig as well. The quick release tail stock would be useful, as well as the rocking tool post as it allows you to adjust the height of the tip of the bit. Actually, the quick change too post would be more useful. I upgraded mine to use the digital readouts from Little Machine Shop, and won't do without them.

 

A decent pair of calipers is important too. I use a 4" dial and 4" digital from HF.

 

Little Machine Shop, Varmant Al's, and other mini-lathe websites are good resources. The best thing though is buying the lathe, some rod stock, and starting to play with it.

[bsenn]

Thinking laterally, you might see if there are am model engineering groups in your area. They are the gents who make model steam engines, tractors and the like from raw materials. They use lathes, milling machines and the like to produce phenomenally detailed miniature marvels of the 19th century. Asked nicely, they could offer some advice about what will most likely meet your needs and may provide tutoring.

Thinking laterally off the lateral thinking, perhaps there is a maker-space in your area with the equipment and people to train you and offer advice on use of said equipment.

[tmenyc]

Ron,

thanks, much appreciated.

 

B,

Sadly, many years of living here (and I'm originally from Milwaukee, close to you..) have taught me that some things are best found here, others simply not. There is a shop like that in the further reaches of Brooklyn, but that is just not for me. If I'm going to do it, I need to have it in front of me.

 

Tim

[FarmBoy]

I'm moving the Monarch 10E next week.

 

Excellent lathe but a little heavy.

[KenD]

I use a Taige lathe for varied and miscellaneous projects. It is quite minimalist, but solid and small. It is clearly in the micro-lathe category. It is basically a machinist's lathe, but also adapts to wood turning and watch making. I am happy with it. Great bang for the buck. If you want to do threading - other than by a die - this is not your piece of machinery. I think you would find it meets most pen related needs.

[penwash]

I also got myself a Taig lathe which is a perfect one for working with pens. I have the Micro Lathe model 4500 II.

 

This is the website that tells you about the lathe and its accessories: http://www.taigtools.com/mlathe.html

 

And this is a the supplier that I use for getting the accessories, prompt delivery and the owner is very nice and a good resource on the lathe and its operations:

http://dearmondtool.com/taigacc.htm

[Ron Z]

I wouldn't buy a lathe without the ability to cut threads. Many of the threads on pens are not standard, and the cost of a single custom made tap or die can cost you 1/4 the price of a lathe. I've had to make taps to chase threads, had to make parts, all with odd threads. I've also had to make pieces with left hand threads, which you can do on an inexpensive HF or Micro-Mark lathe.

[penwash]

I wouldn't buy a lathe without the ability to cut threads. Many of the threads on pens are not standard, and the cost of a single custom made die can cost you 1/4 the price of a lathe. I've had to make taps to chase threads, had to make parts, all with odd threads. I've also had to make pieces with left hand threads, which you can do on an inexpensive HF or Micro-Mark lathe.

 

Good point.

Do you have any recommendation which HF lathe for cutting custom pitch threads?

Or what feature needs to be there in the spec when shopping for one?

[Ron Z]

I use the HF 7X10 lathe because that's what I could afford when I bought it 14 years ago, but plan to upgrade at some point. There are versions with longer beds and heftier motors - 7X14, 7X16 by Grizzley, Micro-Mark, or Little Machine Shop that would be better. The extra space between the chuck and the maximum travel of the saddle would be nice at times. Look for a lathe that does at least 56 TPI, and and has a tumbler gear so that you can do left hand threads. Many pen threads are 36 TPI, which crosses over to a common 0.7mm thread, so you can do that even though you can't cut metric threads with the gears provided. There are conversion kits, but I haven't found a need for them.

[praxim]

Endorsing the comment about having thread-cutting if you are doing pen work, I also figured that if I were going to have it then I should be able to cut both metric and non-metric, even allowing that I live in a metric country. My recollection is that this is available from Chinese lathes as well as Euro and American brands.

 

Although I have bought nothing from them, having a European lathe, Little Machine Shop looks to be a good resource from my time researching the things.

[Ron Z]

 

 

Little Machine Shop looks to be a good resource

 

They are indeed.

[tmenyc]

 

They are indeed.

I am flying to Wisconsin Wednesday, have a week's worth of reading about lathes downloaded from Littlemachineshop on my ipad awaiting my flights...

Tim

[penwash]

I use the HF 7X10 lathe because that's what I could afford when I bought it 14 years ago, but plan to upgrade at some point. There are versions with longer beds and heftier motors - 7X14, 7X16 by Grizzley, Micro-Mark, or Little Machine Shop that would be better. The extra space between the chuck and the maximum travel of the saddle would be nice at times. Look for a lathe that does at least 56 TPI, and and has a tumbler gear so that you can do left hand threads. Many pen threads are 36 TPI, which crosses over to a common 0.7mm thread, so you can do that even though you can't cut metric threads with the gears provided. There are conversion kits, but I haven't found a need for them.

 

Thank you, Ron!

 

The HF 7x10 they have on their website today is rated at 12-52 TPI.

But I can't tell if they have a tumbler gear or not (for left-hand threads).

 

Just FYI to those who are looking for info.

[Ron Z]

It does have the tumbler gear. I thought it went to 56, but I could be wrong. I've don't know that I've ever had to make anything with 56 TPI. I leave mine set up for 36 TPI since I do it so often. The last thing was to cut new threads for Gold Skyline inner cap/derby that had shrunk and wouldn't grip. You might be able to find gears at Little Machine Shop to do the finer threads.

 

Plan on spending some time polishing the gibs etc. and cleaning off the shipping grease if you buy one. Watch for the sales and the occasional 25% off coupon.