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New Future Wood Turner

D

Dan Wickles

Joined
Apr 23, 2008
Messages
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Location
West Palm Beach, Fl
I finally aquired enough materials to build myself a lathe. I need to know the lowest speed that I should construct this fine machine.

Thanks
Dan Wickles
 
Dan,
Welcome to the forum. Glad to have you here.

You need to tell us the largest diameter piece you plan for your lathe to turn, so folks can suggest a safe minimum speed needed. If you will only turn pens, the minimum speed can be fairly high. But if you intend to rough turn 10"-12" bowls from rough blanks you will need a much lower minimum speed.
 
Hi Dan, welcome to the AAW forums. I moved your post to the Main Forum where it's more likely to get an answer--and the How-to area is intended for solutions and answers, rather than questions.
My answer to your question would be to design for the lowest speed you possibly can. 60 rpm is great for sanding, and appropriate for roughing a really big bowl of say, 20-24" diameter. A very slow speed is also good on a smaller turning, for blending in cuts where one part has warped slightly--it's slow enough so the gouge or other turning tool can follow the out-of-roundness while taking a fine shear-scraping cut.
Many lathes available on the market have a bottom speed that's too high for their capacity. Even a 10" mini can benefit from a bottom speed of under 100 rpm for sanding.

Keep us posted on the progress of your lathe, shopmade lathes are always fun to check out.
 
speed is greatly going to depend on the size of work it is designed for.
I would say 0. If it is a variable speed motor, that should not be too hard to get close to. If it is pulleys, back to question 1.
 
Speed is relative

I have a Vicmarc VL100 Bench Model lathe with a minimum speed of 600+ rpm. That's with a 1/2hp 1725rpm motor. It's way too fast for a minimum speed if you want to thread a lid on a box. I didn't know that when I first started chasing threads and had to work fast! But I did make some nice male threads. Once.
I also have a Oneway 1640 that I have used on slow speed when I loaded a 100# chunk of Oak that was out of balance... I think it was probably turning about 50-100rpm... but then, when applying a lacquer wash, I like to turn it about 15 or 20 rpm, to reduce the amount of finish that is slung off, and that always depends on the size of the piece.
If I were building a lathe of my own I'd make the lowest speed be as near to zero as I could, just for general principles... you never know when you need a slow spin.
Just my thoughts on it.
 
I would echo Steve with 0.

300 is an okay minimum if you won't be turning anything larger than 14" diameter.
You can learn to chase threads at 300 rpm.
300 will be a little fast for some sanding but you can get by.

happy turning,
Al
 
Would endorse the comments of my virtual colleagues above.

But: my first lathe would only go down to 500 rpm and that was exciting but manageable for big lumps. Just had to weight the stand well so it didn't dance around the workshop.
 
The slower speeds need to be useable. They are not if there is little torque. This is why most better lathes with a lot of speed control still allow one to change belts for different speed ranges.

Malcolm Smith.
 
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