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Roughing a blank shortcut

Joined
Oct 16, 2007
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Fort Collins, CO.
The feet are necessary if you are not going to bolt the lathe down. As Robo said having the lathe level front to back and across the lathe both front and back so there is not twist will help. You need the feet to level if you're not going to bolt it. I can tell you as a contractor that there isn't a perfectly flat concrete floor. Any slight little undulation can cause the lathe to become out of level or take a foot off the concrete even 1/32 of an inch can make a difference. Having said that more foot on the floor the better so bolting a lathe down IMO with a broader foot that is shimmed with steel shims, if necessary, offers you a lot of stability.
 

john lucas

AAW Forum Expert
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Apr 26, 2004
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Cookeville, TN
The first thing I do is level the lathe both fore and aft. When I loosen each foot individually and tighten it so it touches the floor. As I do all the other legs I try to apply the same pressure on the wrench as I tighten it. That seemed to help my stability on my Powermatic. In my old shop I had 700lbs of pea gravel in bags on a shelf on the lathe but haven't done that yet in the new shop. I have a friend who used to purposely turn really out of round pieces on his Powermatic. What he did was extend the footpring by adding 3" angle iron to the feet. He used 8 foot pieces and centered them on the legs. On the tailstock side he had the upper wing of the angle iron cut off on the inboard side to reduce the trip hazard. That might be over kill for most of us but I could not believe how much difference it made in the stability of his lathe.
 
Joined
Aug 14, 2007
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Eugene, OR
Like Dale said, concrete floors are never perfectly flat. I did residential concrete work for 30 years and every contractor I worked for told me I was too dang fussy to do concrete work. I was a master of the bull float, and was told more than once that "I have never seen some one work the bull float the way you do" and I took that as a compliment. I would never trust my floors to be dead flat. That is why I mark on the floor where the feet are supposed to be. The lathe doesn't have to move far for it to be out of level. My PM, first 'big' lathe was up on 2 4 X 4s which extended back to the stem wall in my first shop. That extra length on the feet helped a lot with stability.

Perhaps I should have been a finish carpenter....

robo hippy
 

John Jordan

In Memorium
Joined
Jun 24, 2008
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Cane Ridge (Nashville), TN
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www.johnjordanwoodturning.com
I often wondered if I should remove the adjustable feet and shim my lathe. Seems like the feet aren’t as stable as the legs. Any thoughts?

No, its just like Robo said. You've probably never had all four feet touching the floor equally. so its always hopping around and never in the same place twice. I have hard rubber pads underneath my last two lathes and they never move. But I do make the effort to make them somewhat symmetrical/balanced and use a reasonable speed.

John
 
Joined
Jun 14, 2011
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Location
Brooklyn, NY
7051F795-F5E8-482F-AF10-04384A51ED07.jpeg C72B55EF-0CE1-451F-8822-A19994D3CB25.jpeg A129DBB1-9AE8-4D65-AD4A-B7921225DC93.jpeg Just realized that my shaking problem may be due to my wood floor. I recently had my 8’ x 10’ shop built as follows. 2 x 12’s, 12” on center on 4 - 12” concrete sonotubes 4’ deep. 3/4” under subfloor on both sides of framing, 1” sleepers with electric radiant floor filled with cement, finally 6” x 3/4” wide solid white oak t and g flooring. It’s very solid and built well.
I moved headstock over the legs yesterday but didn’t help. couldn’t get up to 350 rpm’s with an 11“ natural edge blank, without heavy shaking, that I carefully cut round with my chain saw. Once I turned it round I was able to bring speed up to 800 rpm.
Absolutely no bounce on the floor when I jump up and down.
I’ll check level in both directions and make sure all feet are touching floor later.
Frustrated.
 
Joined
Jun 14, 2011
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Thanks mike. Makes sense.
does anybody think having a wood floor(although built well as described above) would increase vibration with an out of round natural edge blank?
and if so what can be done to stabilize it?
 
Joined
Jul 26, 2016
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Nebraska
A wood floor with wood floor joists could potentially generate a bounce at the right frequency/speed. A solid steel post under your floor joists supporting the lathe to the floor below would stiffen the structure and reduce the bounce.
 
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