Back to the Pole/Flywheel Lathe!

 So this weekend I was able to get back into the shop! It had been 2 weeks since my last foray, and I have to say I missed it. I actually found myself a couple times heading out to the shop late in the evening and looking at the unfinished projects, wishing I had time to do a little work, trying to figure out which project was going to be next.

First project (with a lot of help and a push from my buddy) up on the list was the pole/flywheel lathe which had been out of commission for the last month or so. For those that don't know, I had built a "normal" pole late earlier this year, and did it on the cheap, not knowing if I would even like doing lathe work, but liking the concept and figured it would be fun to build. It was fun and I did like it.

So then came a friend of mine over to the house and I had to show off my new contraption. The first comment off his lips was "Cool, but where's the motor?" You have to understand my friend: as much as I enjoy dealing with wood, his passion is metal. Of course he was joking (at least halfway), but his mind immediately started working on how not to waste half the motion as the machine "resets" after every press of the treadle. I started doing research and he started turning ideas over and over and we finally came to create a lathe that uses the spring pole reciprocating action to turn a freewheel bicycle hub to turn a flywheel...and why not use a real VW flywheel that is just laying around? Cool. This thing turns so fast that it just hums. It's awesome. So we did it. And I broke it. I think the bicycle hub was already worn, but hey, it was on my watch.

And now we are to this weekend. After several discussions, we realized that there is always room for improvement, so we made those improvements after locating another ratcheting freewheel bicycle hub to replace the original.

It is nice. I like it a lot, and I could not have done it without my buddy pushing me to keep making it better and his metal know-how. Thanks! Now I can get back to some of those lathe projects I had planned. It was so nice to hear the hum coming from that flywheel. Speed! MORE SPEED!!

So that was day one, and working on this project in my trashed/torn apart shop drove me nuts. Have to get back to putting it all together again....until next time!  Josh

Here's a little video of the lathe in action:

Josh