World of Bagpipes : Making Bagpipes

Tooling : The Lathe 

Index

Tooling

• Chucks
• Drills
• Reamers
• Miscellaneous

Materials

Making

Metal Turning Lathe

Machines by either Messrs. Myfords or Boxfords would probably be the best to obtain, both being capable of being driven at high or low speed and having wood turning attachments and other accessories available. This is not to say that other makes are not suitable as there are many other makes available especially secondhand but, care should be exercised if choosing a "Foreign clone". The older Colchester and Harrison Lathes are generally too slow although their more recent models have a greater and more useful speed range.

If buying second hand a simple check can be carried out described below under "Tailstock". At left hand end of the bed is the headstock where the drive is situated and a good range of speeds must be available ranging from around 40rpm to at least 1500rpm. It should have a hollow mandrel and at least a number two Morse taper socket in the nose for holding centres and other tooling. The chucks will either fit by means of a screwed external section on the mandrel or on some top quality machines onto a taper and held in place by either a locking ring or cams. These latter two fixings are ideal as they securely hold the chuck under both forward and reverse motion whereas a screwed fitting will undo under reverse. (It is possible to make up a simple locking ring to prevent this providing there is sufficient room behind the chuck fixing thread).  At the other end of the bed is the Tailstock which can be clamped at any point along the bed and serves to support the work in hand whilst turning. Like the mandrel it should have a hollow barrel with ideally a number 2 Morse taper socket for holding centres of various types as well as drill chucks and other cutting devices. A simple alignment check can be carried out by placing centres that have been checked previously into both the Headstock Mandrel and Tailstock Barrel and seeing how well they line up then swap them around and check they still line up. The tailstock has (usually) alignment screws for offsetting the centre for machining tapers but there will be no adjustment for vertical discrepancies although where the fault lies in wear of the tailstock it may be possible to use shims. The barrel should preferably have a graduated scale for depth / travel measurement. The carriage runs on the bedways and is controlled by a hand wheel which engages a rack attached to the bed and carries a further part the top slide which in turn has a fixing for the cutting tool. The top slide should be attached via a circular spigot so that it can be rotated and locked in position to allow cutting to be done at any angle. It's removal generally leaves a socket into which other accessories can be fitted such as hand turning rests for both wood and metal or a vertical slide. A further control on the carriage (normally a lever or pin) engages the "lead screw" a threaded rod that runs the length of the bed and connected to the headstock mandrel by a set of gears. This allows for cutting threads or for semi-automatic feed.

NOTE : This facility must not be used for converting wood from the square to the round as the shock loading will in time cause the teeth of the change gears/gear wheels to fracture and break off.

Ornamental Lathe

These are rarely found and very expensive the most common makes being those of Holtzapfel or Evans. They are designed to produce extremely intricate work and were used by several makers as is evident from the style of decoration on their instruments.