How To Turn Wood On A Metal Lathe

Mount the workpiece into the headstock of the lathe using a holder called jaw chuck Most of the modern mini-lathe come with a chuck guard.

How to turn wood on a metal lathe. Centers are pieces of metal with points at the end that go on either the headstock or tailstock to hold the wood in place when turning. Interestingly along with metals you can use metal lathes to cut through wood pieces as well. Joined Feb 13 2012.

The sorts of cutters used for metal dont give particularly good finishes in wood and the techniques for turning wood are different so you cant really chuck a piece of wood into the lathe in place of a chunk of metal and use the same technique. You can turn wood on a lathe made for turning metals. This is referred to as spindle turning and is the type of woodturning that is done to create long ornate table legs and other long wood turnings.

Metal turning is often high torque lower speed. A good rule of thumb is the wider the stock the lower the speed. Similarly you may ask can you cut wood on a metal lathe.

Can is the important word here. If you plan to turn wood using turning chisels the tool rest is required. Actually the metal lathes existing compound tool rest can turm cylindrical and tapered stock.

The lathe has two ends on it the headstock and the tailstock. You may struggle to fit a cross slide and tool holder. Wood Lathe vs Metal Lathe.

Youre going to need to make sure that the steel is tightly locked in place before you begin turning and cutting it. It really isnt a competition because each of them serves a specific purpose. Wood lathes are for wood pieces and metal lathes are for metal pieces.