I’ve been meaning to post this for over a year now. So my apologies to Michele for taking so long to share this.

By now you’ve all probably come across Dave Gingery’s book on building a metalworking lathe from scratch. Michele from Belgium seems to have done just that, but he didn’t use Gingery’s plans. He made his own!

Michele states that the dimensions for his lathe are a peak of 130mm (which I assume means a swing of 260mm?) with an overall bed length of 1000mm. That roughly translates to a 10″ x 40″ lathe.

But this isn’t the only thing Michele has build from scratch. He also constructed a clockmaker’s gear cutter, the plans for which I posted here last year.

Michele provides plenty of pictures and details for this lathe on his website, which can be found here (English translation) or here (original French). You can also find other versions of the plans for the lathe (DXF, DWG, etc) on Michele’s site, as well as other projects that you might be interested in.

Oh, and this probably goes without saying, but his plans are in French. That shouldn’t pose much of a problem, but I thought I’d mention it.

Thanks for sharing your plans Michele! I’m sorry it has taken me so long to post them.

  Tour_1000mm_Metal_Lathe.pdf (2.1 MiB, 49 hits)
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Here’s a set of plans for a handy Die Holder that fits any lathe with a #3 Morse Taper tailstock.

The aluminum body of the die holder holds the die perpendicular to the axis of the spindle rotation and rotates freely around a steel shaft firmly inserted into the tailstock. This ensures that your part is threaded perfectly.

Here’s a picture of the Die Holder with a 1.5″ die inserted:

Here’s a picture of the Die Holder flipped 180 degrees with a 1″ die inserted:

I got the idea from Steve Bedair’s Die Holder and I adapted it to look similar to a smaller die holder sold here by LittleMachineShop.com.

I created the plans myself using Autodesk Inventor. It was my first attempt using the software, and my first time drawing up plans for the machine trade – so if there are any errors please let me know and I’ll do my best to fix them.

Here are the plans (in PDF format):

  MT3_Die_Holder_-_1.0_to_1.5_Inch.pdf (999.4 KiB, 348 hits)
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I found this nifty little vise over on the Prints and Plans Yahoo group, posted by “SterTrak”. The design allows for the vise to be as large as the length of your mill’s table – which makes it great for holding larger parts.

But as you can see from the pictures, it works just as well for smaller items.

If you decide to make your own please take a few pictures of the process and post them to the forum!

  Versatile_Mill_Vise_Plans.pdf (844.6 KiB, 330 hits)
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