Material: Steel
Units (mm)

NOTE: This project can be easily adapted to fit most small lathes/mills, not just the Unimat 3.

This next project comes to us from Ken, a Unimat 3 owner. Ken posted 5 projects back in 2007 on the Metalworking section of Woodworking Australia’s Woodwork Forums. Here’s a link to Ken’s original post in the Metalworking section of the forum.

Ken has been gracious enough to allow me to share all 5 of his projects here with all of you. My plan is to post each of the 5 projects on a Thursday over the next 5 weeks. That way you’ll have a quality weekly project to tackle over the weekend.

Also, all of Ken’s projects are in metric units. That made me realize that it might be nice for readers if projects were categorized by the units called out in the plans (in/mm), knowing that some prefer (or have equipment that limits them to) working in inches or metric, but not always both. So in the future I will be adding a “Units” tag to each project to help readers easily locate projects with plans in their preferred unit of measurement.

Here’s what Ken has to say about his first project, a Saw Arbor for his Unimat 3 lathe:

“This was the first project I tackled, a saw arbor. It is worth it’s weight in gold, and sure beats using a hacksaw for cutting up small pieces of metal. It cuts through mild steel like a hot knife through butter, and produces a perfect finish.

It was specifically made for my Unimat 3 lathe/mill, and has an M14x1 thread in the tail end to screw directly onto the lathe/mill spindle, this you will need to modify to suit your spindle thread.

It was simple to make, even for this novice, and consists of only four parts.

Materials required are 30mm dia brt ms x 50mm long, a blade, and an M6x12 cap screw.

I started by drilling and tapping the M14 thread, then screwed this to the lathe spindle for the rest of the machining. The rest is fairly self explanatory.

Attached are some pictures and a pdf drawing which gives details of the blade, etc.

The Unimat 3, shown above, is just an example [of what a Unimat 3 lathe looks like]. With mine I have the full kit and kaboodle including the mini mill/drill.

If you choose a thinner blade, or a different bore size, you will have to adjust the shoulder depth and dia to suit.”

- Ken

Thanks Ken!

Check back in next week for another project of Ken’s, a Fly Cutter. You can also subcribe via RSS or email (via the box at the top left of the page) to be notified automatically when a new project is posted.

  SAWARBOR.pdf (45.7 KiB, 2,268 hits)
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Material: Steel
Units (mm)

Here’s a nice set of plans by Clark P. for a small 5cm vise for your mill. Clark wrote a great instructable on the project that I’ve linked to below. You can view instructable via the embedded player, or you can download a PDF copy of the step-by-step plans (at the very bottom of the post below the flash player).

You can also download a copy of the PDF plans directly from the instructables website, but you need to be a member to do that, so I’m saving you that step by linking to them here.

A small low profile machine vise – More DIY How To Projects

  A-small-low-profile-machine-vise.pdf (489.1 KiB, 2,417 hits)
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  Small_Vise_Drawings.pdf (187.1 KiB, 2,030 hits)
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Material: Steel
Units (mm)

Thor Hansen has several great plans on his website. This particular plan is for a very rigid toolpost that can be made completely on the lathe (not requiring a mill). Thor walks the reader through the process in the PDF document below. Be sure to visit Thor’s site for more great plans.

  A_Toolpost_for_Cross-Slide.pdf (234.6 KiB, 4,036 hits)
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