I’ve always wanted one of these. When I was wee, we went on tour round England visiting various relations, and I remember being very impressed with a lathe. I’ve no idea which relation it was, unfortunately, but I do remember the lathe.
I decided to order one from the UK rather than direct from China, since its much easier to get support if something goes wrong. I was dithering between between the Axminster AW305WL and the Charnwood W824. They both look suspiciously similar, so they’re probably made by the same factory in China.
I ended up going for the Axminster, simply because they had lots of good reviews of their support. I also bought the Clubman SK100 chuck package and a set of their beginners HSS wood turning chisel sets.
It arrived a few days later, and I installed it on my workbench. I’d also been doing research for weeks on Youtube about using a lathe. I can particularly recommend Rex Krueger and Richard Raffan as good starting points.
First Attempts
I tried turning some scrap wood I had lying around from construction. Its definitely not the sort of wood one should really use (cheap construction pine), but I didn’t want to buy expensive wood only to ruin it.
Kinda worked, but lots of tool marks from my own inexperience. I also didn’t have proper grades of sandpaper to smooth the surface.
Vice Caps
The first proper thing I made was some caps for my vice:
They’re still a bit rough, but they work fine for this purpose: I used some bamboo chopsticks to hold them on.
I also didn’t have a drill chuck so had to make do with my drill press, which worked, but was definitely not pleasant to use.
More Things!
After using it a while, I ordered a few more things:
Drill Chuck
Something like this, so I can drill holes in items properly and accurately!
Extension Bed
The lathe was a bit cramped with the original length, so I decided to get this extension for it.
In fact, here, I’m glad I ordered local to the UK: the shipping company managed to break the first extension bed I received. Axminster were extremely competent and communicative here: they arranged to pick up the broken item, and ship a replacement without any problems.
Incidentally, the box the extension arrived in leaks the original manufacturer of the lathe:
Googling MC1218A shows its actually manufactured by Huaju Industrial.
Carbide Lathe Tools
A set of carbide lathe tools – I wanted to try these out as well as the traditional HSS tools I’d already bought.
There seems to be a big argument about whether one should use traditional HSS tools or carbide tools.
- HSS need regularly sharpened, but are reputed to give a smoother cut.
- Carbide do not need sharpened (you can replace the bits), but give a rougher cut.
I suspect they’re all of use, depending on the exact situation.
Sandpaper
Some Turners Mesh sandpaper – I needed proper increasing grades of sandpaper for finishing off the wood.
I suspect this stuff is overpriced, but I wanted to get a simple batch of different grades to try out. I’ll probably research other sources in future.
Lathe Bench
The problem now was the lathe was taking up all my workbench: I need it for other things!
So I went back to Fusion 360 and started designing. I was trying a sort of angled design first:
But I decided I should stick to what I knew for now, so I ended up just using then same design as my main workbench, but changing the size to suit the lathe. Luckily I’d designed it parametrically, so I could just resize it and read the lengths of wood right out of Fusion.
I also found this nifty website for allocating the lengths-of-wood-you-need to the length-of-wood-you-have-bought. It also does sheet materials too!
Another weekend of sawing/bolting/cursing/etc and I had my new lathe workbench:
It was a wee bit top-heavy, so I put some heavy boxes on the bottom to counterbalance. Oh, the top surface was some spare plywood Gordon the builder had left over from the studio.
Turning Glued Wood
I had some spare larch left over from the studio outside, so I glued some of it together and turned it: you get some interesting woodgrain effects:
What Next?
I wanna try some bowls: I’ve ordered some wood blanks, but not had the time to try them out yet.
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