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This is the first part of the jumbo lathe that will eventualy be about 22 feet long and will handle pieces (hollow ,light weight wood and foam stock) 16 feet long X 4 feet in diameter .I am building it to do a batch of roman fluted columns for a house in Clarksville .More on that later ...

The first project was to create a convex semisphear for a logo sign for my brother's company ,see the whole finised product and details at SignalysisLogoSign The machine may look scary but it is only turning at about 1 turn per second from a dryer motor that can bearly handle the torque . The shaping tool is a piece of an old wieght lifting bench press I found in the pile of stuff I got from the warehouse moveout .I have 4 inch X 2 inch steel C beam for a tool rest and coat the metal with alot of grease .It takes awhile working back and forth but the perforated aluminum is fairly plyable so it makes it easier .

Fluted Column test piece

This is the first test section of the fluted column .First I make the planks by ripping a bevel cut on each side ,followed by a dato groove on each side .Normaly I would glue up the assembly on the lathe and turn it till it was round and smooth to the outer dimention and then cut the flutes but for this test I just wanted to see how fast my ripping was going to take .I also wanted to get a sample of how deep the customer wanted to go with the flute so I cut the flutes before assembly with a 1 " inch half round cutter in several passes .Customers have a hard time seeing things in 3 dimentions looking at a picture so I hope this helps .

First step is put together a drive for the head stock. I got a 1 hp motor and a bunch of shaft stock, bearings and pulleys and got the main shaft down to about 33 1/3rd which makes it sound much like a skipping record when its doing the ruffing cuts.

After I got the machine all assembled and tuned up it was time to assemble the planks that makeup the ruff column body.

I do a test fit of each one before spreading the glue. It takes alot of special clamps and mounting blocks to wrestle them into place.

After the glue has dryed and all the temporary screws have been removed, plugged and trimmed I make the first test passes to check the alignment and straightness. Once the column body is centered I do the first ruff passes.

Once I get it to the diameters I want I have a special adapter I made for the tool platform that holds a belt sander at a set depth and set the X-Axis motor drive almost all the way down to about 1 inch per minute and let it go. And last but not least is making the cutters for the flutes.

And several months later.......

I made the flute cutter blades out of steel from replacment leaf springs I got from Tractor Supply. The flute starts just below the top of the column so I had to do a "drop in cut" which was kind of scary because at the time the cutter tool depth adjustment was located about a foot behind the blades spinning at 1700 RPMs and 1HP. I have a screwjack actuator I installed before doing the next one making it controllable at a distance. Robots are our friends.

The little bit of tape hanging off the remote power switch on the table holds a bolt that is to remind me before turning it on to remember to remove the bolt holding the plank being cut to the lathe head. If I forget I risk wrecking the cutter blades on the bolt head and having to spend days try to get it back to the way it was. I came way too close the first time.

For more details and the final installation pictures check out the FlutedColumns

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