The Lathe
My lathe is a Grizzly Industrial Machinery G0766 22". I have turned bowls, platter, drink muddlers, pens, mallets, and many other things. I enjoy turning because unlike square woodworking, woodturning provides instant results.
My lathe is very heavy, but for some operations it is not heavy enough, so I built some shelves out of the plywood crate that it was shipped in. I use the shelves to store some of my wood to weigh it down more. With the added weight from the wood, the lathe weighs about 650 pounds.
Since this lathe was designed to turn large pieces, it needs a powerful motor. My lathe has a 3 Horsepower, 240 Volt, 3 Phase motor that runs on single phase power via a VFD. The advantage of having a three phase motor is that the motor itself is much simpler than a single phase motor, it lasts longer, and has significantly more torque.
Since I turn all sorts of pieces, I need a way to hold my different workpieces to my lathe. I use jam chucks, scroll chucks, spur drives, worm screws, faceplates, and steb centers to fasten my work to the lathe. I use my faceplate and chuck most frequently because I turn a lot of bowls, but if I were turning reproduction stair spindles, for example, I would use my steb center and spur drive more frequently. Because I have many different accesories, I mounted a piece of plywood to a steel I-Beam that is in front of my lathe to hold some of them.
