Hi Samuel you don't say what lathe you are working on and what steady you would like to make. I think you are looking at a fixed steady and i prefer cast iron as it has good stability. My steady for my Myford M Type has a cast iron body with screws with phosphor bronze tips to prevent wear and damage to the job you are turning. Aluminium is too light for a steady in my thinking but I have seen steel ones which were fabricated and very stable. There are possibly very large loads on a steady like, I somtimes put a long bar in my lathe and part off a length when the bar will not go down the spindle.

David

Will it be your only steady rest? Or will you use it when the capacity of the OEM one is inadequate?

In your orignal post, you only quote a maximum capacity, so your design parameters are at best only 50% defined.

If you want it to range from 4.5 inch diameter down to nominally zero diameter, the adjustment screws will be very long. They will stick out a lot at maximum capacity and might be slender and whippy (totally negating any benefit you gain from whatever body material you choose) at minimum capacity.

Hence, I would say there are more pressing decisions to be made at this stage than body material.

Something like this from a piece of thick wall tube would not need much work, either with the flat fingers shows or drilled for round or threaded fingers.

Regarding DC's point you could always have a reducing ring that slipped inside the larger ring and held by grub screws then use the existing fingers on the reducer

Long fingers are inevitably floppy and making a nice solid job of the fitting is more work than you might initially expect. Simple screws are always too floppy. There is a reason why so many lathe makers use a separate slider and adjustment screw.

My Smart & Brown 1024 has a simple L shape lump of bronze for the support member on the travelling steady. The internal angle acts as a simple Vee support simultaneously holding the job against cutting loads in both axes.

Maybe something similar would work as a substitute for two of the fingers on a large three point steady with a suitably solid finger providing the third support. I imagine that clearance issues would restrict the size range so you'd need more than one to cover the full range. But how hard is it to cut a Vee out of a piece of plate.

Alternatively a couple of small ball bearings ought to work just as well as a V cut out. (Cue 600 post discusiion as to weather bearings are better than pads!)

Should I ever need to make a large steady I'll try doing it that way. I have a vague memory of seeing a picture or published design along these lines, possibly based on two steel rings welded together with suitable spacers between.

Clive

The Hemingway kit large steady is aluminium castings, so they must do the job. Probably good enough for a mini lathe. But Jason's suggestion of cutting down a steady from a larger Chinese lathe would be better and easier I should think.

If you make your own, yes large diameter screws with brass tips work ok. I made one for my Drummond and went a bit overkill, cutting it out of 1" steel plate and using 9/16 UNF Grade 8 set screws for the fingers with brass tips. Only thing is the tips can get a little concave hollow worn in them so when you turn the screw a fraction to tighten up the finger, the hollow swings around and takes up more slack than you really expect. But it does not seem to stop the whole thing from working very well.

Making a larger steady is on my Round Tuit list. Probably will use the same type of screws but fabricate the body out of thick walled square steel pipe or maybe a bit of thinner steel plate, say 3/8" with bosses welded on for the fingers.

Do you mean something like this,Clive?

Pretty poor quality pictured, snipped from the YouTube video that I made of the accessory.  A clearer and fuller description is in the video itself and there's a write-up in MEW, too, issue 287 November2019 pages 9 to 15 . The capacity goes from about Ø5mm to a smidgen over 90mm. I used the ball bearings as an experiment and the swinging arm arrangement for the adjustment was chosen to combat the "long finger" problem mentioned above. The steady featured is a travelling one but a similar design would be equally suited to a fixed version. In fact, using the ball bearings would be better suited to a fixed rest, in my opinion.

John

Edited By John Hinkley on 19/01/2023 14:05:53

I tried with bearings but they lock up under pressure, the best solution I found for heavier work was bronze fingertips and a bit of lubrication

At risk of being pedantic – we must get the terminology right ! A, it's a steady, 2 point, often travelling or 3 point, fixed. Or B it's a rest ! It can't be both ! If welding is an option then a lump of heavy gauge tube, nuts and set screws tipped with brass or bronze will make a simple 3 point steady in steel, probably stronger than cast iron. Noel

That just needs a coat of paint to move into the much better than it needs to be and I thought was going to be category

I saw a steady rest that had an extra slide that was at the back, close to the centre height. It was intended for big pieces when taking a fairly large cut when roughing down an outer diameter. He said that the front one the top one and this added one was all that was needed and the back bottom one he seldom used. I have not tried to figure out if true, but was told that it averaged out the roundness of the stock better resulting in a more round part being cut.

The advantages of cast iron is quite easy to cut when making things from it, and is alot more rigid than cast ali or mild steel. I like Jason's idea of getting a casting of one existing and reworking to suite. It sounds like you have the standard one that comes wit the machine, so it only has to cover outside that to the 110mm or so in diameter.

Here is an unusual type that has different sized holes and can be rotated and locked to suit

——————————–

It's a fixed steady rather than a travelling one, the barrel of the tailstock is shown inserted there as a means to accurately adjust the the setting so it will remain centred whichever one is rotated to. Ideal for rod & wire work