The Shed team is taking a few weeks’ holiday from the work computer and heading to the beach shed for some kickback time.
So. Merry Christmas and have a wonderful summer holiday to all our readers, followers, and fans. Enjoy this special extra time in your workshops and we will be back posting projects again mid to late January.
Have fun, be good and be careful out there.
The right stuff – part 2
If you have followed our Metalworking Lathe 101 series in The Shed magazine, you will have a grasp of the basics, so here are some helpful tips to improve your lathe experience and make those projects a bit easier to do.
Quite often the material or item we need to hold in the chuck is delicate, either due to a fine finish that we do not want to put chuck jaw marks on or due to it being thin walled. For jobs with a surface finish that you need to protect it is handy to have some strips of aluminium to put between the chuck jaws and the job material. These are mostly used when holding in a 4 jaw chuck as the job will need to be “clocked up” using a dial indicator to get it running true.
The thickness of the aluminium strips cannot be relied on to be consistent as they squish up a bit with the tightening of the chuck jaws, so when using a 3 jaw chuck the auto centring effect is not so good.