Mary Ostler

By Request: How I convert my electric lathe to a functioning pole lathe.

I am lucky enough to have a decent size shop, and even luckier (mis-fortunate) to have inherited a lot of old tools. The decent size shop seems pretty small when all the tools are taking up every corner. Hence I have no room to have both a modern electric lathe, and a period pole lathe. This means most years I end up doing with out a pole lathe for the fall and winter months.

I came up with a simple cheap way to use the electric as a pole lathe.

Everything I need to convert the lathe. two eye hooks, one bungy cord, some rope, and a wooden stick, tape, and a steel rod. (you can accomplish the same thing without the tape, steel rod, and one of the eye hooks, you’ll just have less adjustment)

First off you need to place the eye hooks in the ceiling. That was easy in my shop, as I have drywalled all the surfaces but not taped and finished the panels. I can see the nails holes and thats where I drill the pilot holes for the two eye hooks. I spread them apart just shy of the steel rods length.

I took the steel rod, and wrapped both ends with duct tape. We are just keeping the rod from slipping out of the eye hooks.

Next, one end of the bungy cord was hammered closed. The rod with the duct tape ends are slid through the bungy end.

The rod is then slipped through the eye hooks in the ceiling. You can see how the bungy hook can now be slid along the rod. I used some rod I had kicking around the shop. It has a bit of flex but not enough to cause concern.

I tied the bungy to the rope. Don’t cut anything at this point as you will be needing to adjust it to your own needs. I also left the hook on this side, as I can quickly wrap the bungy cord around the hook raising the distance of the rope to the turned object.

The rope is then wrapped around the object to be turned.

The rope is then tied to a wooden stick (1×2 scrap I had kicking around). Don’t cut the rope as you will be playing around with this area too.

When I have the real pole lathe outdoors, I have a long treadle that I have jutting out the front of the lathe. It makes for a fairly small movement with my foot to get a good length of travel. In my shop I have a smaller stick and I have running parallel to the lathe bed. This means I have to use a bit more knee to operate the lathe, but it still works great.

The only other thing I do to the electric lathe, is I remove the motor belt. This means the snap back motion is not slowed down by the motor resistance.

This is not as nice as some of the pole lathes I have made, but it keeps my shop a little more workable space wise.

***update*** 

 I recieved a second live center for my birthday. With this live center installed in the headstock, and the tailstock allready equiped with a live center, you get a  pole lathe (bungy) that has very little resistance in the snapping action of the bungy cord. Works better than my purpose built pole lathe.