spring pole lathe

Great job on it! Once you get a good rhythm with your foot you will get better as you go. Have fun learning on it.

-- "Always continue to learn, laugh and share!" JJW

Wonderful job!

-- Improvise.... Adapt...... Overcome!

Nice work, this is one sweet lathe. For videos just search YouTube for “spring pole lathe”, there is a lot of them.
Have fun with your new toy.

-- "I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The point is to bring them the real facts." - Abraham Lincoln

Fun tool. I’ve wanted to make one of these for many years, but I just don’t have room for one. Have fun!

-- Mike, an American living in Norway.

Nice…look forward to seeing some of the work you will turn out on this. Post lotsa pix !!

-- Ed

Haven’t used one in 40 yrs. But one thing I do remember is keeping your drive line on a off fall part of the turning. That way you can leave that section larger dia. to get more travel on each stroke. The smaller the drive line dia. the faster you can spin. Makes a difference on how fast you can work down a piece, or if it’s hard wood or soft. You get into the rhythm of cutting on the downstroke and backing the tool on the up. You can vary your foot stroke/speed but most newbies seem to have enough trouble keeping a steady stroke and cutting on the down. Have fun!

Nice work,it looks just like Roy’s .During his visit to Portland a few years ago I actually had an opertunity to try his spring pole lathe out,very cool.

i’ve always wondered why this design over a foot pedal and fly wheel? it seems like the fly wheel would give more consistent cutting action.

Thanks so much everyone for the comments, and the tips. I’m sure it’s mostly just a question of practice. I did a two-day turning course a year or so ago (on a regular lathe) so have some rudimentary knowledge (let the bevel rub,e tc) but am basically a newb.
jjw: I see you’ve made the same lathe a couple years ago. Looks really good.
Oldtool: I’ve seen a few videos on youtube and I’m sure there’s more to find. There’s a group of bodgers in England that look pretty interesting.
Bold1, your idea about where to have the drive line is interesting.
Jim: it’d be nice to try out Roy’s, or to take his course to make one. It was a surprisingly easy project to make.
Jeff. Certainly a foot pedal and fly wheel have the advantage of turning in the same direction all the time rather than reciprocating. I thought about making one, but find the idea of rigging up gearing a bit intimidating. An advantage of the spring-pole lathe is the fact that there are 2 dead centers and no bearings, so the turning is actually smoother. And you can generate more power (but less speed). but a foot treadle lathe would be great.

-- Jeremy, in the Acadian forests

thanks, Jeremy, keep posting

Very nice job. I made an end vice version along the lines of this one:
http://www.greenwoodworking.com/EndVicePoleLatheArticle

But I kept having the hole in the piece get bigger and bigger, so thanks for the tip on getting the dead centers closer to perfectly conical.

Thanks, Tim.
My approach to milling the dead centers was to grind them to approximate shape and then chuck them into my drill press. Then with a file held on an angled piece of wood to serve as a jig you can spin the bolt until it’s uniform.
This won’t work, though, with the 90-degree centers for the end vice pole lathe.

-- Jeremy, in the Acadian forests

Looks like fun. I did not see any comments regarding Shannon Rogers. He is part of the WoodTalk podcast. He has built and uses a spring pole lathe. His website is http://www.renaissancewoodworker.com. He also has some videos on YouTube. Hope this helps.

-- Darren... Hmmmm, I got nothin.

very, very cool. wanted to try something like this for a while. Nice job, thanks for posting this!!

-- Jdeefus, Canton, Ohio

This looks great, definitely on my to make list once I have the space. Where do you get your green wood from?

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