Some ideas for lathe accessories for you or anyone else. These items are incredably useful and are a great way to learn some of the techniques needed for later and how to plan your work steps so you can get from A to B without painting yourself into a corner. For example the pinch screw holes on the borring bar holder shown below were drilled first at the tapping size, then depth stop drilled for screw body clearance and cap head clearance then tapped for the threads BEFORE slitting the block using my power bandsaw. This particular series ensured that the metal would not flex from the pressure of the drilling and result in misaligned holes. Although I did the slots in the knurling holder with my milling machine they COULD be done in the lathe since the slots are actually centered on the headstock axis to hold the knurls centered.
The tail stock die holder is a particularly handy item. It isn't quite as good as machine cut threads for being 100% concentric but it's a darn sight better than removing the item and starting the die by hand. The stub that is in the drill chuck is a length of annealed 1/2 inch drill rod. the extension behind the die holding head is drilled and reamed to 1/2 inch so it's a nice accurate fit on the drill rod.
I didn't do a matching tap holder since what I do is just hold the tap in the drill chuck and turn the headstock chuck by hand for a couple of turns. By that time the tap is well on it's way and it's safe to continue by hand.
Another handy item is this ruler holder for the tail stock. It's made from aluminium other than for the clamping screw which is steel. Super magnets are used in the flange and the indicator finger. The one in the flange sticks to the ruler well enough ( it's stainless) that it moves reliably and the magnet in the indicator lets me slide it along the corner of the tail stock body to set to an inch mark once the drill bit is just touching the workpiece. Makes it easier to keep track of hole depth. And BEST of all you always know where your 6 inch scale is for when you want to make a quick measurement!
The dial guage attachment lets me use the dial guage in the tool post by just replacing a tool bit. It may or may not be obvious but the center of the guage pin is even in height with the top surface of the fake tool bit that fits in the tool post. That puts the anvil on center or near enough to it. The "bitsa" method I used isn't pretty but the post and plate came from a previous item so I reused them. Feel free to improvise...
And no lathe is complete without a boring bar setup. For the small stuff I use two of the carbide sets with 3/8 and 1/2 inch round shanks in a holder. For the big stuff I use this post and bars. The small one shown in the holder is 5/8 diameter by around 7 inches long (the rest is on the other side sticking out) and the big hole is for the 1 inch diameter "Big Bartha"...
All the holes in this were drilled using my medium size drill press by doing the drilling in stages so as to avoid requiring heavy pressure that would have flexed the drill press column and table out of square.
Finally a little flat vise I made about 10 years ago. It's proven to be very useful for drilling holes in small flat plates or pieces that could not be held in a normal vise due to being so thin that they would crumple. It's shown here with a 1/4 inch washer that is about to be drilled out to a slightly larger size. New holes for new drill sizes are drilled in the vise at need.
Hopefully this should keep a few of you out of mischeif for a few evenings....
