New Member

[Steve KirkwoodParticipant @stevekirkwood52380]

Hello from Anglesey,

Just a brief introduction and hoping to learn something useful regarding model engineering.

I'm a retired BT satellite communications engineer and formerly a merchant navy radio officer of some 20 years before satellite coms superseded traditional morse transmission and reception.

I know very little regarding model engineering and even less of lathe operations.

I have bought a Warco WM240 lathe, a set of HS tools, a tailstock chuck and one or two other bits to get me going.

Anyway a quick intro for now.

Regards

Steve

[Steve KirkwoodParticipant @stevekirkwood52380]

Introduction

[Brian HParticipant @brianh50089]

Hello Steve and welcome. It sounds like you mean business with the machinery and tooling that you have.

I assume that you will be machining soon, but, what are your interests? locomotives, road vehicles, ships engines, making tooling or something else?

Whatever your interests, there will be people on here willing to help, they're a good bunch.

Brian

[David George 1Participant @davidgeorge1]

Hi Steve welcome to the forum. You should get a good bench grinder to sharpen your tools on, the better you can afford and correct grinding wheels for tooling. Green grit for tungsten carbide and Aloxite for high speed steel. The most important thing on a lathe is getting the center height of the tool correct and on center. Also get some bits of material to experiment with but get known materials as you will learn how materials cut but you have to know what the material is what you are cutting.

David

[Steve KirkwoodParticipant @stevekirkwood52380]

Hello Brian,

Thanks for the welcome!

Not too sure yet where to start on my new hobby – something not requiring a mill. I think learning to properly use the lathe is sufficient for now.

A simple steam engine (run from compressed air) is what I'll likely start to practice on, there are plenty of simple looking designs on the web to choose.

Many thanks

Steve

[Steve KirkwoodParticipant @stevekirkwood52380]

Hello David,

Thanks for your good advice -I think I have a lot to learn. One question springs to mind: what do you do with the swarf you produce? I can find an answer to that one and suppose the council would take umbrage if I put it in with the tins etc. I read swarf is dangerous stuff for cuts and a plastic binbag no protection against it's sharp edges.

I'll shortly be ordering some bits of material to practice upon.

Regards

Steve

[Thor 🇳🇴Participant @thor]

Hi Steve,

Welcome to the forum. Seems to me you have found a way to get rid of the swarf, I'm lucky to be able to dispose of the steel swarf in a nearby skip (belongs to a small milling, turning and welding shop).
For a simple steam engine you might have a look at the John-Tom website, among the first steam engines I made was one of Elmer's engines, and managed to get it to run. Here is another website with plans, good luck.

Thor

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

Hi Steve, Welcome aboard shipmate ! Place a speaker or magnetron magnet in a plastic bag,( a good one) and it will make picking up steel swarf easy, turn bag inside out and remove magnet, put bag in bin- simples !

You could always make a simple ish spark eroder – you may then find you have a few new friends. Best wishes Noel.

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Welcome!

My advice would be to become familiar with the machine, by making simple items on it.

It will pay you to buy some reading matter, to answer a lot of your questions before you even ask them.

Zeus Charts. Still using the one that I started with in 1958. Grubby but a constantly used reference, for tapping / clearance drills, thread pitches, depths et.

Used it only yesterday to look up a bending allowance for some sheet meta!

Other suggestions

!an Bradley "The Amateurs Workshop" Not just using a lathe, but tool grinding,, and general fitting work.

(Spending your money already; buy a bench grinder and learn to grind tools ).

One of my many hobby horses is a Tangential Turning Tool. Easy to grind- just one face, but ideally you need another of my hobby horses, a Centre Height Gauge.

A useful gadget and learning exercise to make one.

Tubal Cain "Model Engineers Handbook" A very useful reference book for many aspects of model engineering.

L H Sparey "Then Amateurs Lathe" is often quoted as the bible. Deals with the Myford 7 Series in effect, but the basic principles are the same for almost any lathe.

Harold Hall (former M E W Editor ) has written several books in the Workshop Practice Series about lathework, and workshop projects.

David Clark, Dave Fenner (both former M E W Editors ), and the present one, Neil Wyatt have all written books, mostly dealing with the mini lathe, and Neil's latest one centres on the Sieg SC4 lathe.

The basic principles are same for most lathes, even if the detatils differ. And as a newbie, it is the basics that you need to grasp.

Making small tools will provide you with: useful experience, and tools that will be useful in the future.

Examples.

Tap Wrenches, Die Holders, sliding Tailstock Die Holders, (I also made a sliding Tailstoc.Tap Holder )

Sliding? Because if the holder slides on an arbor in the Tailstock, the newly cut thread is spared the load of trying to drag the tailstock along the lathe bed.

More potential expenditure.

You will need measuring equipment.

A digital Calliper. Changes from Imperial to metric at the touch of a button.

Can be bought from places like LIDL or ALDI for about £10. The Moore and Wright one at about £25 got a good write up in MEW a while ago. A nice instrument.

If your lathe has a 4 jaw independent chuck, you will need dial gauges before too long.

Handy for checking and adjusting the lathe set up, (Taking twist out of the bed, Tailstock alignment among other tasks ) Essential for centering work in a 4 jaw chuck.

Why a 4 jaw?

3 jaw chucks will hold round or hexagon work reasonably well concentric. But not ABSOLUTELY

A 4 jaw chuck will allow work of any shape, round square or irregular, to be set on centre, as accurately as you wish.

A plunger clock is usually graduated in thousands of an inch, or 0.01 mm if if Metric

A finger clock will probably be twice as sensitive. Useful when clocking a bore

Which may well lead you into buying a magnetic base. The adjustable types aid setting, but are less rigid. When measuring, rigidity is essential. You can't measure off a datum which wobbles about.

The list of "Nice to haves" or "Come in handy one day" is almost endless

And we haven't started on drills and Taps and Dies yet!

Probably best to buy as and when the need arises. (No point in having Taps and Dies for Cycle threads, or Brass if you are never going to use them! )

Probably, you will start with Metric, and may never need any other, unless you get into restoring classic cars, motor cycles, or machine tools. In which case BSW and BSF will probably be needed, possibly plus BA, and UNF and UNC for more recent cars and bikes )

There, should have given you brain ache!

Howard

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