Hi Calum,

I am also a newbie to soldering an brazing. A book I've found very informative is "A Guide to Brazing and Soldering" by Keith Hale who set up the company CuP Alloys (useful supplier for the hobbyist).

Welcome aboard!

You are unlikely to be short of help on here, for any aspect of your activities..

Possibly, your choice of lathe will be determined by, not by the maximum diameter that can be turned, but more by the distance between centres. You might be able to gain a little more by removing the Tailstock, and siting a fixed steady at the extreme of the bed. Although this will maximise the length that you can machine, you will not be able to cut outside / beyond the steady.

It may be that a longer instrument could be made in two, or even more, parts, which are subsequently joined to make a much longer "body" suitable for the lower notes.

Howard

Your budget, length and diameter of materials you wish to turn will in the end determine the particular lathe you end up with also whether it will be bench or stand fixed.

If you require repeatability, that is producing multiple units of the same design you might want to consider lathe with a copy attachment. Some wood Lathes even have indexing (Harvey T40).

So I would think you might start by listing the required functions and maximum sizes down and then try to match them to what is available, both new and second hand.

The best in the second hand market I would think would be the Union Graduate, every school used to have one. The other quality European Lathes to look out for S/H are Hegner Lathes with their variable speed function although they're like hen's teeth to find. Other than that you would be mainly looking at Far East offerings where the Harvey Lathes are in my opinion some of the best out there.

The GH1230 is a big lathe. However you may want a fairly large spindle bore so that you can run the body of the reamer into the headstock as you make it in stages. There are other techniques however. A member of one of my clubs who used to be a professional woodwind instrument maker mostly uses a treadle operated wood lathe which is long rather than large capacity, way smaller than a Graduate. He does most metal work on a treadle operated Exe lathe though he may have usead a bigger one for reamers.

The only far eastern lathe that immediately springs to mind, that might cope with work anywhere near 1,000 mm long would be the Warco BH900. This will be a rare bird, and only available now on the secondhand market.

Its smaller sisters, the Warco BH600, Chester Craftsman and possibly Engineers ToolRoom BL12-24 may be found on the secondhand market. The Chester Craftsman is still available as a new machine.

Having a 5MT bore, about 38 mm from memory, would it be possible to do some work with the material inside the Mandrel and pointing out behind the Headstock?

Howard

Oh dear, time to 'fess up to another unfinished project

Started a very long time ago, based on instruments described in Cocks and Bryan. The various ferrules were made from nickel silver sheet – annealed and rolled round a former then bound with a couple of pieces of iron wire to keep the edges together while silver soldering. The ferrules were then rammed back on a mandrel for polishing.

The ferrules looked fine when new but over time the silver solder discolours, leaving a dark line.

I think a thin coat of nickel plating will sort that out. These drones are ebony and the "ivory" fittings are some sort of plastic sold as a substitute back in the '80s. I have a length of African Blackwood waiting to be made into a 7 key chanter and I've amassed a collection of old EPNS cutlery for converting into keys. Perhaps I'll actually get round to finishing the set some time.

Anyway, welcome Calum and I look forward to reading about your progress.

Stay well,

Rod

Are you making model instruments ? With it being a MODEL engineering site .This is why I’ve left other so-called MODEL engineering fourum. It becomes anything goes.

The most stupid response ,we use full size lathes For MODEL engineering what is a full size lathe ? The name of the fourum is in the title Model engineering ! Not anything made in a work shop. What next ? Today’s post how to milk a cow using a milking machine made in a shed !

Tony you may as well leave now as this site is also the home to Model Engineer's Workshop where the emphasis is on WORKSHOP and we accept all sorts.

As for someone's comment about it being hard to find far eastern lathes with 1m between ctrs rather than look at the likes of Chesterhobbystore try their other Chestermachinetools site. Should be able to find something upto 12m between ctrs and a spindle large enough to fit a whole set of pipe into

Good on you Rod,

I would be interested to know how you successfully managed to scale the vacuum system.
Shed ? Men's shed, or….

DaveD

edit how not if

Edited By Meunier on 06/01/2021 20:59:20

Welcome, Calum.

Woodwork is my day job. I haven't yet got a round tuit, as far as true model engineering is concerned.

The vast array of topics on this site is why I keep reading most of the posts. A genuine fount of accumulated knowledge.

I subscribe to MEW, as my interests were more about machinery and tooling, although the more time I spend on here the more I am getting interested in model engines.

You can't please all of the people all of the time, but most of the folks on here seem pleased most of the time, including me.

Mark.