Workshop
22 August 2023
I have quite a nice view from my workshop with the roller shutter up, and here it is if I stand at my lathe and look to the right...
...and here is the same view, but taken from doorway.
Latest Version 27 November 2020
Added a milling machine a couple of months ago, an Axminster SX4. It was more than a bit of a struggle, and I needed help and heavy lifting tackle from a couple of my neighbours to get the thing up, on its table, and secured to the floor, but it was well worth the effort. A really good little machine. I agonized over this purchase for about 8 months before finally taking the plunge. A second hand Tom Senior maybe? Or a Bridgeport? Either could have been bought for less than I finally paid, and a good one would probably be better than the SX4. There could also have been the need for a 3-phase power supply, not necessarily difficult, but certainly added complexity. In the end I bought the Chinese manufactured Axminster SX4, mainly because I am a woodturner who makes tools and not a machinist. It would also have been hard to get the thing home (during a pandemic), hard to set up, and it would have taken too much space. And I don't think I am expert enough to tell a good machine from looking at it on someone's shop floor and a not so good machine could have been a very expensive mistake.
I also replaced the stone wheel on the Tormek T7 with a 600 grit diamond wheel. I have never regretted buying the Tormek, but this diamond wheel is a revelation. It is very aggressive yet gives a nice finish and edge to tools. I now have a couple of 4-facet masonry drills! Ridiculous?
The disc and drum sanders now have their own dust extraction (pictured below), separate from that used for the woodturning lathe and bandsaw. This means I don't have a hose trailing across the workshop entrance, which was not ideal.
26 Feb 2018 Update
Moved house to Rutland at the beginning of January and I now have the workshop up and running. At 400 square feet it is the height of luxury for me.
I Decided to do a proper job on the electrics so I have 34 power points on 2 separate 32-amp rings with many of the points mounted on cable trays dropped from the ceiling. The lighting is all LED giving about a thousand lux (which is very bright) with separate task lighting over the benches and the wood lathe.
Dust extraction can be easily coupled up to the planer, both sanders, the bandsaw and the wood lathe via a separate blast gate.
I have installed New Age cabinets so that most of the stuff can be put away. I used the Pro 3.0 range that are are extremely heavy all welded units which look very good, are very durable and the shelves and silky smooth sliding drawers take the heavy stuff I have filled them with, with ease.
Axminster Bandsaw
It is tough to turn without a bandsaw and the bigger the better for cutting green timber into manageable sizes either for drying or turning, making round blanks, sizing boards, cutting the segments for segmented turning, and rough cutting veneers.
8 August 2019
I’ve had the bandsaw now for nearly 9 years. It is a very good machine, which I bought from Axminster Tools, and it would not be possible to do what I do without it. I’ve had to change the starter switch several times and so I have a couple of spares handy. However, the fence is a shocker and I have struggled with it over the years.
The picture to the right shows the, very expensive, replacement ‘Axminster Deluxe Rip Fence Upgrade’ and it is a thing of beauty. A couple of hours to assemble, make a sacrificial fence, fettle a bit to make things clear and some setting up to get it all square and the job was a good 'un. Very smooth to move to position and easy to calibrate the scale for accurate cutting.
Wish I had splashed out sooner.
Myford Mystro lathe
This version of the lathe has a variable speed drive but no speed indicator. That is easily corrected by buying a bicycle speed indicator, which you can get from any cycle shop. Attach the magnet with CA glue to the shaft and make a bracket to mount the sensor coil close enough to the magnet for it to detect shaft rotation. Then do the calculation (described in the link above), make the necessary settings on the digital display and you have yourself a digital display of lathe speed for about a tenner.
Myford ML7 lathe
Absolutely indispensable for manufacturing jigs and fixtures. I found that the purchase of an engineering lathe took my woodturning capability up several notches, and there is the shear delight of possessing a machine I have coveted most of my life. The Myford ML7 is beautifully made and has the same spindle thread as my woodturning lathe, making chucks and faceplates interchangeable. Wood dust and engineering lathes and tools do not mix, so it is covered with a dust sheet when not in use along with all the tooling and fixtures that go with it.
Tormek T7
A Tormek T7 is a significant investment even before you add in the woodturning jigs. However, sharp tools are essential for pleasurable woodturning. I don’t doubt that if I practise freehand grinding for twenty years I will get halfway decent at it, but why would I want to do that? I don’t think I was doing it particularly badly, but with a Tormek sharpening system I get a perfect edge and form, in fact just about perfect tools. You may think that it will take ages, but it doesn’t, because you remove almost no metal from the tool once you have the shape right. Ok, getting your tools to a position where you can quickly stone and hone to sharpen takes time, but you do that job once and then you are set for the life of the tool.
The best part of the Tormek system is not the wheel, which is very good, but the jigs and the way they work with the wheel. The one for cutting precise profiles on turning gouges is excellent. The one for grinding drills with 4-facets was hugely expensive and a pure indulgence. However, I am able to grind polished 4-facet drills from 2.5mm to 18mm (the largest I've tried) with absolutely no difficulty whatsoever, and the resulting drills are like nothing I have used before: remarkable. I thought I could grind a drill; I was wrong.
I bought this one in December 2013, it was a lot of money and worth every penny.
Tormek T7 a couple of years into mission
The water tank is guaranteed to deposit some of its contents when lowered and raised, by me at least, unless done with unrealistic care. Not a big deal I suppose just incredibly annoying and really poorly designed. So that's the bad bit out of the way. Two years on and the T7 gives me razor sharp, perfectly profiled tools and it is quick to use. I am absolutely delighted with it.
August 2020
Bought a diamond wheel. Wow, what a wonderful thing it is. I bought the DF250, 600 grit wheel which gives my tools a good edge but is very aggressive and hence it gets there a lot quicker than the stone wheel. I can grind carbide tipped drills and I never imagined I would be using 4-facet masonry drills!
This Jet 12" Disc sander is an essential piece of kit for segmented turning. Because the lathe is now not tied up driving my home made disc sander I can now do some operations in parallel which makes me more productive. This is also a much more precise machine than mine and very well worth the money.
I replaced my grinder with a 6” Record machine and a 20mm Optigrind cubic boron nitride (CBN) wheel and a 40mm 80 grit Blue Microcrystalline wheel, both wheels very nicely balanced by Roy Child. The grinding jig on the left was cobbled together and did a job for a couple of years. The tool rest on the right was designed by Harold Hall and is from his book, Tool and Cutter Sharpening. My purpose in making this fully adjustable grinding jig was to enable me to accurately grind the special tools I need for lattice cutting, from High Speed Steel.
Although I originally intended the CBN wheel would be mostly used for making HSS lattice cutting tools, I also use it for putting a more aggressive edge on scrapers than I can with the Tormek wheel, which are then honed with a diamond lap.
The CBN wheel grinds with just a touch on the wheel and hence puts very little heat into the tool and removes very little metal. With this set up and the Tormek T7 I think I have all the bases covered.
To facilitate a bit of a re-arrange so that I can get more machines in the place I put the Jet 10-20 drum sander on its own stand with casters. This homemade stand was a fraction of the price of a Jet stand and that doesn't have wheels.
The Axminster AH106PT planer/thicknesser was added so that I could joint larger pieces of wood and thickness boards without getting snipe at the ends, and it does both very well. I put castors on the bottom so that I can easily wheel the thing around the workshop, and at 150 kg it's otherwise a heck of a lump. These machines take quite a bit of setting up.
I have the Numatic NVD 750 vacuum extraction. This Axminster CT50-RCK Wall mounted Chip extractor has 3 times the air throughput of the Numatic and was bought with the planer/thicknesser in mind. I also have a Jet AFS 500 air filter.