Morning Danny

Just had to smile when I read your post we're all the same buy a lathe then use it to make bit's for it !

H

As I probably won't be doing any screw cutting on the lathe I removed one of the gears to the lead screw drive so that I can engage it and lock the carriage when parting off.. One mod that I keep telling myself to do is make a depth gauge for the tail stock. Will get around to it one day.

There is a vast literature on the web about minilathe modifications.

Frank Hoose's website http://www.minilathe.com lists many mods and give much useful guidance for beginers.

John Moran's site http://www.gadgetbuilder.com is another good source of mods.

Jose Menezes site http://www.toolsandmods.com also features many good mods and also contains the drawing of Ralph Patersonus modification.

My own site, which was inspired by many mods from the above sites, also lists many mods , is here:

http://mikesworkshop.weebly.com/

In addition, in the Workshop Practice Series there are two books by David Fenner detailing mods and improvements to minilathes. Many of these were also articles in MEW. There have been several other articles by other authors in recent years on minilathe mods.

Try Googling "minilathe mods" and many more articles of interest will appear.

Mike

My picture folder has got images of some mods to my Clarke CL300.

I've got taper-roller bearings in the headstock, done a BLDC motor conversion, redone saddle gibs, converted to lever- feed tailstock as well as camlock clamping plus camlock locking of the top-slide swivel to allow rotation without full retraction of the slide itself.

Martin.

Edited By blowlamp on 23/01/2015 14:06:04

Neil.

I'll take a look at doing something for the topslide swivel mod in a week or so, as it's less involved than the BLDC conversion and I'm short of time at the moment, but I will get around to it if you think it stands a good chance of getting into print.

Martin.