Construction of My Gingery Style Lathe

Last update 11-23-2007

    This is a description of what  I have built based upon Dave Gingery's Book 2 "Metal Lathe" of the "Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap".  The first thing that Dave has you build is the Base/Ways.  After having read and corresponded on the Gingery Yahoo list.  I found several alternatives to what Dave said to build.  And after thinking about it I did diverge from  what he said to build.  What I wanted is a lathe longer than what he was building which was a 7 x 12 lathe.  What I wanted is a 7 x 24 lathe.  So what I did was look for designs on the Internet of people who had built longer lathes.  I found a basic design that used tube steel to build the base.  What I built was this.



As you can see I have built 2 bases with ways.  Long story short the gentleman who is supplying me with my scrap metal wanted a set of machines for himself.  And at this point building 2 is a easy as building a machine.
    To start after getting the steel tubing for the base I pondered whether to bolt or weld the legs to the base.  The 3 x 2 tubing for the legs was cut on my metal chop saw at a 45 degree angle to provide access to the holes for mounting the lathe to the wooden support structure.

 Also I happen to have a MIG welder and after making a mess of the welds on the foundry I found that being consistent on my tools appealed to me.  So I whipped out the welder and spot welded the legs to the base.  All said and done was about 10 minutes of work.

The next thing that had to be done was to flatten the 3 x 3 hot rolled steel tubing on the top so that the steel ways that I bought would fit flat.  What it took to do that was a lot of filing as trying to scape the steel tubing just was not working.  I also went out on the internet and found a machinist marking dye so that I knew where to file to make the top flat.  Here is what I found.

The material is from Dykem and I ordered it from Amazon.  The can on the left is the "Remover and Cleaner" and the can on the right is "Steel Blue Layout Fluid".  This is your basic machinist dye for layout on metal.  If you use what Dave describes for layout fluid it will take about 30 minutes from when you apply it to when you can scribe your layout lines.  This stuff dries in about 30 seconds but you can create a build up by spraying multiple layers and will need the cleaner to get to a workable surface after about 3 coats.  Here is a picture of my filing work after using the spray and rubbing the way steel on the top of the base.

Also realize the the spray is a little messy and you should protect your work surfaces from it.  You will also notice the it appears that there are 2 strips of metal that is being filed upon.  But no this is hot rolled steel and it seams to dip in the center so lots of filing on the high sides to get the 75% contact needed to support the way.
    After spending a lot of time filing on the base I finally go enough contact to mount the way to the base.  What I did was scribe the layout marks for where to drill the mounting holes for my 1/4 x 20 hex head screws that I was going to use to attach the way to the base.  The first set of holes I drilled into the ways was a 7/32 inch hole.  This is the tap size needed to tap as 1/4 x 20 screw hole.  I started at each end moving down 1 inch from the end and drilling the first set of holes then I skipped 4 inches and drilled the next set of holes.  I stopped when I got the the center and started drilling from the other end back to the middle.  After drilling all the tap holes. I clamped the way to the base and drilled a hole thru the way into the base at each end and opposite corners.  I then drilled these 2 holes out to  1/4 inch and tapped these holes with a 1/4 x 20 tap.  I countersunk the holes to hold the screws and installed both screws to hold the ways ridge to the base.  I then went back and drilled all the tap holes in the base.  After that I removed the ways from the base and drilled all the holes out to 1/4 inch and countersunk them.  I then tapped all the holes left in the base for the screws.  When I finished I installed all the screws into the way and base.  It looked like this when I finished.


At this point I have 2 lathe bases with ways attached and they look like this.



I will update this when more work has gotten done.