I've GOT to stop looking at the Grizzly site!

[dbhost]

Part of me wants to fall over laughing at the very thought of this...



Grizzly H8071 Lathe Attachment for Drill Press and no I didn't stutter... I was actually just kind of perusing drill press using their search function and saw that...

On the surface the very concept seems ludicrous, but there is a teeny tiny part of my skull that says, hey wait, that's not the worst idea I've ever seen!

Has anyone here had any experience with this? Is it as bad of an idea as it seems?

[Russianwolf]

I've seen someone turning some very nice pens on a setup similar to that.

If you think about it, a drill press is nothing but a verticle lathe in most respects.

[poolhound]

Hmm, that is interesting and its only $20. Just think of all the money you will end up spending on turning tools though $$$$$.

[dbhost]

I've seen someone turning some very nice pens on a setup similar to that.

If you think about it, a drill press is nothing but a verticle lathe in most respects.

Sort of, but the head stock and tail stock on a lathe are kept in firm relation to each other, the table on my DP swivels as do most I have seen. How do you keep them aligned?

And it's not really the $$ that is the big question there, but rather the floor space... I like that it is something I can stuff in a cabinet when I am done with it...

[Uncle Cracker]

I've also seen some nice stuff turned that way, but I'm sure that there are more problems with eccentric turnings than would be seen on a lathe. This would be magnified on close-tolerance work like pen-turning. And I don't see how one could avoid a chronic stiff neck, either, but I guess it's all in what you are used to. As for me, I'll stick to my lathes...

[Russianwolf]

Sort of, but the head stock and tail stock on a lathe are kept in firm relation to each other, the table on my DP swivels as do most I have seen. How do you keep them aligned?

Oh, I'm not saying it's the best solution. (I'll keep my G0462)

It's no worse on alignment than any of the cheap tube bed lathes I would imagine. The tailstock on those can easily shift out of alignment.

[dbhost]

I guess, the position still seems quite unnatural to me...

[gsmittle]

I put together something similar last summer to turn down then end of a dowel. I was making a new tension crank for my itty-bitty 9" bandsaw (broke the original plastic tension knob) and then end of the dowel was a little too big to clear the top wheel.

I drilled a hole through the piece of dowel, epoxied a connector nut in one end (was going to do that anyway) and ran a piece of all-thread through the dowel. A couple of nuts and a washer to keep the dowel in place, put it in the chuck, then I put the end of the all-thread in a hole in a piece of scrap clamped to the DP table. Next I used a couple of hand screws to clamp anther piece of dowel next to the first one and used a bench chisel to carefully turn down the end. It worked pretty well, but I wouldn't want to do anything critical that way. Guess I need to ask Santa for a lathe...

g.

[docrowan]

I've got several books by Rosario Capotosto, a woodworking author from the 60's through the 80's. He has plans for this exact setup in one of his books, although it was home made from hardwood and a steel pipe tool rest.

[dkerfoot]

You can start a fight over these. Some people get all kind of upset because the DP spindle isn't designed for side pressure and/or the MT can come loose...

Personally I wouldn't worry about it at all...