High everyone! New member, first post and first project!

I want to cut spirals on spindles (aka barley twists) in wood and it looks like its going to need a custom tool.

It's basically as 'simple' as replacing a lathe tool with a router and getting the work to rotate slowly in sync with the tool moving along the bed and not at a cutting speed. Hope that makes sense.

All of this is just for miniature work on spindles up to 1.5" thick and up to 6" long so a full sized lathe is overkill.

A metal work lathe that can cut threads will sync rotation and tool travel but I can't see how you would get the work to rotate slowly enough, the pitches seem to be too small and from what I can see see I couldn't justify such a large cost. A smaller one would be cheaper but would it cut threads and support a dremel?

Having set metalworking lathes to one side, I looked at woodworking lathes. On full sized older and cheaper lathes you can disconnect the belt drive and turn the work by hand but you can't sysnc tool movement to rotation. Smaller lathes have a direct drive motor which wont turn slowly with any kind of torque but there's still no easy way of syncing them.

My current plan is to bolt a milling table onto a drill stand with a dremel in it and fabricate a headstock and tailstock to hold the work. Then I can turn the headstock (large chuck?) by hand and link the rotation of the headstock using a sprocket and chain arrangement to the bed advancing wheel to move the work under the tool.

So, I'm really looking for ideas – alternative ideas that might fit my skills and budget to achieve my desired result or just where to get suitable sprocketage and chainage from.

A couple of other thoughts – the pitch of the spiral is in the order of 1:1 (that's the diameter of the spindle in tool movement versus number of rotations) but of course I really need to vary that slightly to increase and decrease the spiral pitch. And I looked at a stepper motor solution but its an area i'm unfamiliar with and I know its going to involve controllers, iterfaces, pcs and software etc so I dont think it would be an easy or inexpensive path for me .

Any advice offered gratefully received!

I think I see what you mean. So it's basically what I was proposing but instead of turning the chuck by hand I'd turn the table advance knob by hand? Either way the tool would still be static in the drill stand.

Would some kind of flexible shaft be a mad idea? Too much play?

thought I'd post these for your interest.

Ive listed them in reverse so you can see the results first then how he built it.

I wonder if you can get tiny bikes complete with gears?

Wow… I wish I understood what you are all saying!

What I do pick up from it is that what I need is model/hobby sized helical milling machine?

I suspect they dont make them…. so how do I create one? Can a mini metalworking lathe be modified? In my original post I outlined how I thought I might go about making one from scratch. I just need a way to link the hand-turned chuck with the milling table wheel in such a way I can control the spiral pitch. A simple gearbox I suppose or an arrangement of cogs and chain like you'd have on an old lathe to control speed. That much eludes me.

So frustrating a metalworking lathe just can't quite do it!

Thanks for that video. I think I see whats going on now. The problem this guy has ended up with is one I'm grappling with. How do you vary the gear ratio for different pitches? At least he's managed a low enough pitch to get one working. I didn't think that was possible on a small hobby lathe.