Artisan Mc900 Woodturning Lathe
- Artisan Mc900 Woodturning Lathe Kit
- Artisan Mc900 Woodturning Lathe Machine
- Artisan Mc900 Woodturning Lathe For Sale
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After looking at features like speed, strength, price, and durability, we picked the Jet JWL-1440VSK 1 hp Wood Lathe with Legs as the Top Ranked Wood Lathe on the market today. Its simple design lets you slide and pivot the different features to customize its overall shape and design for your own use, and it has a locking feature that keeps the attached legs from moving while using the lathe. Sherwood Lathe Copy Attachment One-handed clamp Renowned woodturner, Andrew Potocnik.
Once you have done a bit of turning this process becomes second nature. However you always want to remember to safely secure the wood to your lathe. Wood flying off of the lathe is the primary cause of serious injury for woodturners. Spindle PreparationPrepare your blanks.
Get them reasonably round or square. On square blanks mark the center by drawing a pencil line from opposite corners. The intersection is your spot to mark.
Use an awl or sharp point to make a dimple at the intersection.Your drive spur in the head stock and the live center in the tail stock are what will hold your spindle blank in place. Obviously you can’t move your head stock around because it has to stay connected with the motor. So make sure it is firmly attached and not loose. (More expensive lathes allow you to turn your head stock. Just make sure it is locked into position.) Spindle TurningMove your tool rest close to the head stock and make sure the tool rest is out of the way of where the spindle will be mounted. Mount your tail stock on the lathe. Your tail stock is adjustable and there is a lever that tightens and releases your tail stock.
Make sure your tail stock is movable. Move it to about the right place for the length of your turning blank.The image below shows you the details of the tail stock. This is the reverse view because the levers to lock the tail stock and quill in place are on the far side of my mini-lathe. Use the image as a reference for the following instructions.
Step by Step Instructions. Line the dimples up with the drive spur and the live center. This is more awkward to say in words that it is to do. Put one end of your turning blank against the headstock. Line up the dimple with the center of the head stock. You may have to move the tail stock back to get your blank in position on the lathe.
Move the tail stock so that it is close to your turning blank. You can actually touch the turning blank at this point if you want to. Lock your tail stock in place.
Line up the dimple with the point of the live center. Turn the handle so that the quill advances out of the tail stock towards the head stock. This will move the live center into the blank. Advance the quill to tighten the two points into the turning blank. There is a locking screw on the quill. Tighten this to hold the quill in place as you are turning. You will have to unlock this if you need to adjust your quill during your turning.
Rotate the blank that is now held between the head stock and the tail stock. It should be held securely in position and turn freely. Move the tool rest up to the blank.
Adjust the tool rest to be at the mid point of the blank (or a little higher or lower depending on your turning preferences). Again rotate the blank to make sure you don’t stick on the tool rest. Stand clear of your lathe and turn it on. While spindle turning is generally done at a higher speed than bowl turning if you are turning a large spindle then start with a lower speed. Use your to turn your spindle round.Adjusting the Tail StockIf you have some catches or are taking heavy cuts you might find your turning blank loosening. This can sometimes happen if the drive spur wears away the wood and no longer catches the wood enough to turn it.
Artisan Mc900 Woodturning Lathe Kit
When this happens the blank will stop turning when you try to take a cut.Turn off the lathe. Loosen the locking screw on the quill. Advance the quill towards the head stock. Check that the blank is secure.
Lock the quill in position. Turn on the lathe and keep turning.The other challenge is not to over tighten the quill.
I know, it is holding the spindle on the lathe! However the thinner the spindle gets, like an, the more likely the extra pressure will bend the spindle and make it impossible to turn a round spindle.
Generally if the project is turned in one session and you don’t over tighten the quill you should be okay. It is a challenge if you take the spindle off of the lathe and now you are remounting it. Take your time adjusting the spindle bland to ensure it is in place and it is not being bent by excessive pressure. Bowl Blank PreparationA bowl blank can be a square turning blank or a blank taken from a log.
You should have a flat surface to attach your face plate to the blank. Bowls, because they have larger diameters than most spindles, have a higher centrifugal force on the lathe. That is, they want to leave the lathe if they are not securely held in place. If you can trim the corners of your blank to make it fairly round. A badly out of round blank can bounce a heavy lathe around the room!Estimate the middle of your blank and use that mark to center your face plate. Use wood screws to attach the face plate to your blank. Holding the blank in place is more important than saving some wood.
Wood screws have the screw threads farther apart which helps the screw hold the wood. Try to line up the holes on the face plate so that you are not putting two screws in a line with the grain of the wood. A 3 ½” face plate has the screws fairly close together. If they are on the same line of the grain you could end up splitting the wood and losing your bowl blank when it is on the lathe. Attaching the Face Plate to the LatheSlide the tool rest out of the way. Screw the face plate onto your drive shaft. To make sure the face plate mounts securely on the drive shaft the drive shaft has to be held stationary.
My mini-lathe has a knock out bar that fits a hole in a ring on the drive shaft. One hand holds that still while the other tightens the face plate. On some lathes you can lock the drive shaft so it won’t turn or you may have a special “key” to hold the drive shaft in place. If you do not hold your drive shaft still you can have the bowl blank unscrew and come off the lathe while it is running.
(Yes I’ve done that when I was in a hurry. Make sure it is on there tight!)To take the face plate off of the lathe you insert your knock out bar in the hole on the drive shaft. Put the wrench on the face plate and move them in the opposite direction to loosen. Bring in Extra SupportJust because you are turning a bowl does not mean that you take the tail stock off of your lathe. In turning the outside of a rough bowl the extra support of the tail stock will keep you blank where it is supposed to be. On the lathe! The above image shows the tail stock moved in for extra support.After the bowl blank is mounted slide your tail stock up to the blank.
If you need more room for your tool rest you can extend the quill of the lathe which will move the base of the tail stock from your bowl blank. Make sure the tail stock is locked down, the quill is advanced, and the quill is then locked in place. Now you are good to go. Bowl Blank Turning RoundUse a bowl gouge to turn your bowl blank round. With a bowl blank rotating in the lathe, and the grain is perpendicular to the lathe (at right angles) then you will be cutting end grain twice on every revolution of your blank.
Your bowl gouge is designed to withstand the forces that cutting against the grain will produce. So do not use your Spindle Roughing Gouge. There is a reason that Spindle is in the name. That is what it should be used for. My Lathe makes a Funny NoiseBe aware of the sound your lathe makes. It will be slightly different between spindle turning and bowl turning.
Frequently a change in the sound of the lathe, or the wood, or the cut that I’m making, will alert me to a problem with my turning blank. I have tightened a few bowls back onto the lathe because I heard a change in the sound the cut was making. If you hear a sound you are not expecting then shut off your lathe and check it over to make sure nothing has come loose. Once everything is secure you can go back to your turning.
Here are some.Keeping the wood on the lathe is good for 2 reasons. Firstly it keeps you safe, and that is important. Secondly you are able to complete your projects. I’ve had a few spindles and bowls that made unexpected trips away from the lathe and the results were not pretty. So safety is important and for turning that includes keeping the wood on the lathe.Turning For ProfitThese posts are for you, the woodturner. If you are just starting out on your woodturning adventure then could be helpful.
Some easy spindle turning projects are,. When you are learning to turn bowls then a is a good project to introduce you to using your face plate. Follow that one up with a or a small.I love wood turning and sharing with you. Thank you for joining me on this woodturning journey.
Have fun and remember to.
Artisan Mc900 Woodturning Lathe Machine
Artisan LatheE-MailArtisan LatheLittle is known of the origins of the Artisan Manufacturing Co, of 839 West Sixth Street, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA but - should the design of their 5-inch centre height lathe illustrated below be a guide - they must have produced some interesting machine tools with unique combinations of seldom-seen features. The earliest mention of the Artisan dates from 1923 in the magazine ' Belting and Transmission ' where it was described as, ' An attractive proposition for the dealer who sells to the garage, Service Station and Small Shops '. A second, more complete advertisement ran in the ' Industrial Education ' magazine of 1924 where it was claimed, ' It was designed to meet the needs of the general machinist, tool maker, garage mechanic, gunsmith, electrician, amateur, and wherever a small lathe is required.
Its radically new design makes possible its very low price. It has a swing of 11 inches with 24 inches between centres, and is driven by a 1.2 h.p. Motor' - The final known mention is in a 1927 edition of the ' American Blacksmith and Motor Shop ' where some more relevant and interesting details were listed including, '.16' swing over the gap, 1 5/16' hole through the spindle, Quick-change gears, Graduated Compound, set-over tailstock.
Can be arranged fpor belt-drive or for motor direct-connected to a light socket. Don't delay-Write Today!' However, production was eventually taken over. Of Los Angeles, a company who appear to have been involved in manufacturing a variety of products. Unfortunately, although the Rocky Mountain version was modified in several ways, no details of their production run for lathe, or relevant sales literature, has been found.The Artisan, with a useful 24 inches between centres, demonstrates a manufacturer revelling in a dichotomistic mixture of simple and complex design, cost cutting and needless extravagance in the materials employed. The main features included: a very deep-section, flat-topped, V-edged cantilever-form bed with a 16-inch capacity gap and the saddle guided on the English 'narrow-guide' principle with a vertical way set inboard of the front V; a gear-driven headstock, devoid of any lubrication system - yet with a large (17/16') bore spindle running in very substantial bearings braced by deep ribs upon which rested a sheet metal cover.
A plain apron, devoid of any controls and fitted with a 'full-nut' for the leadscrew with the latter a 'barley-sugar' coarse-spiral of 2 t.p.i. The carriage could be propelled along the bed by either a hand-cranked (90-degree drive) bevel box (with bronze gears) or by a full screwcutting and feeds gearbox. A single cross-slide was fitted, running on old-fashioned square ways and driven by an exposed, Whitworth-form thread that lacked a micrometer dial. Even the contrived to be different, with the casting left open at the rear to reveal the sliding spindle; although this left a proportion of the barrel unsupported, it did have the distinct advantage of letting the locking clamp pull down on an uninterrupted slot and so reduce the chances of a split casting as the unit gradually wore in service.At a time when almost every other lathe of a similar size was supplied with a loose countershaft that required bolting to a wall or the ceiling, the Artisan could be supplied in a ready-to-run form mounted on a well braced, motorised stand.
The built-on countershaft was well engineered with a motor bolted to the rear face of the bed driving down (with a suitable wide flat belt) to a shaft running in bronze bearings. A simple cone clutch was built into the large driven pulley and operated by a handy, front-mounted lever connected to a rod that passed through the bed to connect with a linkage at the back.Instead of a separate bracket (banjo) to carry the changewheels the Artisan used a complex system that utilized the inner part of the cast-iron gear guard. The cover was fitted with both fixed and sliding studs to carry the gears (some of which were in bronze) with the complete assembly arranged to pivot on a bolt mounted to the rear of the headstock spindle; as this gave the effect of an ordinary tumble-reverse mechanism, moving the cover in the appropriate direction caused the rotation of the leadscrew to be reversed. It was also possible, with some effort, to alter the ratio between spindle and screwcutting gearbox input shaft: the large (96 tooth) 'screwgear' on the end of the gearbox shaft was held in place by a quick-release spring clip; by removing this gear room was provided for the stud of an intermediate compound gear (of 28/56 teeth) to be placed in either of two slots and adjusted to engage with any of the three gears on a triple-pinion stud gear (with 12, 24 and 48 teeth) located in the upper left-hand section of the cover.
A set of five grooves, turned into the gearbox input shaft, allowed the large final-drive gear to be positioned correctly in relation to the others - it being necessary only to drop the gear's spring retaining clip into the correct slot.To obtain the necessary clearance, the gear could be fitted with its pronounced central boss facing either inwards or outwards. Yet more individuality was displayed in the location of the leadscrew 'nut', this being fastened not in the centre of the apron (as on most lathes) but bolted to its left-hand face. It appears that the designer, fearful of bending loads overcoming the rather thin casting when turning large diameters in the gap, incorporated a thrust plate on the front face of the bed against which an adjuster nut, screwed through a boss on the front left corner of the apron, could bear. The idea was reminiscent of that used on some lathes, where the top of the carriage-feed rack was used in a similar fashion.Fitted with sets of slots at right angles to each other, the saddle carried a single, bolt-on cross slide (there was no swivelling top slide) - the idea being, presumably, to allow the cutting tool to be moved outwards so as to reach the periphery of large diameter work turning in the bed's very deep gap. The slide was driven by a crude, exposed Whitworth-form screw and, though no micrometer dials have been found on early machines, the inner boss of the handwheel was formed with the possibility of being engraved for this purpose; in addition, the top of boss forming the handwheel thrust face had a raised section that might well have been intended for a zero line.Dating the lathe remains a puzzle - the writer's best guess being a production run starting in the early 1920s and finishing in the mid 1930s. Bearing witness to the fact that the lathe must have remained in production some years - and sold in reasonable numbers - were the number of changes made to its specification in a version and the continued development.
Modifications incorporated into the former included an increase in the centre height to just under 6-inches; a variety of longer beds; different stands (including a cast-iron version closed in at the front but open at the rear); a proper compound slide rest with the cross-slide ways changed to a more modern V-type; the top-slide base graduated in degrees and a T-slot provided to hold a standard, lantern-type toolpost. In addition, zeroing micrometer dials were fitted to the top-slide, cross-slide and carriage handwheel - with the latter featuring a vernier scale - a fitting seldom seen on even the most expensive toolroom lathes. The saddle-to-bed fit was adjusted by tapered gib strips and the unusual 'carriage-gap support' given a much more substantial bronze foot (rather than the bolt used on earlier examples). Most unusually (though perhaps not unexpected on this strange lathe) the leadscrew had a double start, left-hand Acme-form 2 t.p.i. Thread.Fitted with a different bed of much reduced depth (though retaining the same saddle ways), the Mk. 3 Rocky Mountain version carried the cast-in word 'bench' - and was fitted with a neat, all-V-belt swing-head countershaft mounted at the rear of an extended-depth headstock-end bed foot. Although the rest of the lathe appears to have been left largely unchanged, in order to increase the travel of the cross-slide, a conventional 'distance piece' (in bronze) was bolted to the front of the (all-new) casting to carry its feed screw and micrometer dial.If you have an Artisan lathe, know anything about the Company or come across advertisements featuring the machine, would be interested to hear from you.Artisan photographs continuedThe unusual Artisan lathe.
The cantilever-form bed, though massively deep, was formed from relatively thin-walled castings with its narrow cross braces spaced well apart. The motorised stand, in this case formed as an open, squared-based pyramid carried the countershaft across its two rear legs.The vertical rod topped by a wooden knob operated the spindle clutchThe countershaft was fastened across the two rear legs and, unusually for a lathe of this size and era, the system incorporated a cone clutch, built into the pulley driven by the motor. The clutch lever was connected to a rod that passed through the lathe bed and down to a simple toggle mechanism that operated against a spring-loaded plate. One must admire the confidence of the designer that a bed with a 75 lb motor bolted directly to its back face would not be distorted.A simple cone cutch was built into the countershaft's driven pulley. The bearings were machined from bronze castingsRear view: direct, high-speed drive to the headstock. The headstock employed an unusual combinations of features with the open gears devoid of any lubrication system yet with a large bore spindle running in very substantial bearings braced by deep ribs upon which rested a sheet metal cover.
Artisan Mc900 Woodturning Lathe For Sale
Change of speed was effected by sliding the double central gear from side to side.Front view: direct, high-speed drive to the headstockRear view: backgear engaged for slow speedsFront view: backgear engaged for slow speedsSometimes found on Capstan (hand-screw) lathes where speed, operator convenience and grouping of controls were important, a hand-cranked bevel box drive to the carriage feed must have been an expensive addition to the lathe.