The truth is that I never had much interest in getting a lathe to turn wood pieces. I do recognize that I am very interested in watching them work, especially if it is live and I see the wood shavings jumping in front of me. And furniture with lots of turnings is not something I like too much either. I always thought that if I ever needed a turned piece, or for example turned legs to make a wooden table, I could buy the pieces already made.
Sometimes I browsed online stores on the Internet for the prices of the cheapest lathes, but they were always at least double the price of any of my DIY routers, and since it was a significant outlay for me, I never decided to buy one.
After a few years I still haven’t bought a nice lathe, but I found a drill tool kit and I couldn’t avoid buying it. The fact is that among all the accessories it includes a much better quality drill powered lathe kit.
Another option I had was to try to make a wood lathe with the drill, but since I was not very sure about how to get a good drive center, a good tailstock with a good live center and a good tool rest, I never got around to it either. Although searching for one cheap lathe some time ago I found, for about 70 € plus shipping, this economic lathe kit that needs a hand drill to make it work. Surely if you search you will find something similar in other hardware stores with online store, but since you asked me where I bought it, it was in Comercial Pazos, and you also have it in Torn y Fusta. I have to say that I haven’t tried it yet and can’t tell you how good a result it gives (well, I’ve already tried it several times and it doesn’t do wonders. It is difficult to get pieces of decent quality).
The lathe bed is a nice aluminum profile about 90 cm long. It seems to be of good quality and the only thing that could be asked of this lathe bed is that it should weight a little more, something difficult as it is made of aluminum. anyway it can be screwed on the worktable. They could have made it out of steel to make it heavier, but it would probably make the lathe kit more expensive and the finish for a cheap lathe would probably not be as good as what you get when you make an aluminum profile by extrusion. It comes with a slot into which three nuts fit to anchor the other three basic parts of the lathe: the headstock, the tailstock and the tool rest.
Both the tailstock and the headstock, and also the tool rest are anchored to the lathe bed by screwing a bolt to the corresponding nut that slides into the slot. If you look at the picture on the left, and as you can watch in the video, I had to shim the front of the headstock so that the drive center was properly aligned with the tail center of the tailstock. And the advance screw of the tail center is a little loose in the tailstock, but once the nut is tightened, it stays firm.
In addition to a simple lathe plate, this drill powered lathe kit comes with a pair of drive centers. One of them is the typical one used in the headstock of the lathe, and it has the four tabs that leave the typical cross marks on one end of the turned pieces. In order to use the other drive center it seems that it must be used together with one screw. That screw is screwed into the small pieces of wood to be turned so that they can be turned without the other typical spur center.
The tool rest slides very smoothly on the bed, allowing the tool rest to be placed in almost any position around the workpiece. Together with a simple lever, the tool rest can be easily and quickly loosened and re-anchored to any position on the bed.
The only drawback I find is in the edge of the tool rest, as I think I will need use a file to make a small grinding on the edge where the tools rest, so I can move the gouges and chisels smoothly from side to side on the edge of the tool rest.
You can also see in the picture, and in the video, a small metallic table that is placed in the same place as the tool rest and that, together with a sanding disc pad for drill that we can install in the drill chuck, allows us to have a simple and very useful disc sander.
You can follow in this link everything that I publish about this woodworking lathe kit.
