Questions from a new guy...

[Dragons_fire]

yeah, im "lucky" that i dont have any friend into machining... some of them like this kind of stuff, and come over to use my lathe, but then they always look out for deals on tools and other small parts.

the only tooling i have ever made was:
1) a jig to hold gear blanks on my lathe,
2) a jig to hold the gears for facing after and
3) i modified my compound vise to take out some slack.

my next tools are going to be holders for taps and dies that i can turn by hand.

[Thomas Staubo]

Drilling a tiny orifice on the lathe

Here is a YouTube video showing a great method for drilling tiny holes on the lathe.
It helps to have a high spindle speed it seems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6-4oyIoku4

Check out his other nifty videos too (click on "more from this user").


Thomas

[tiptop]

smaller chucks

I have a small chuck thatstarts at "0" and only goes up to about 3/16". It has a threaded hole in the back, so I put a long 3/8" bolt in it and cut off the head. when I want to power it I generally use my cordless drill mootor for better speed control, otherwise I use it by hand.