Buffing station upgrade.

[caskwith]

This was my original setup, some of you may have seen it before in pictures and videos. It's a fairly simple setup made using a MT2 arbour that fits into the headstock and some threaded rod. The buffs are 8". The jig has performed well for a couple of years new but one thing always bugged me, changing the arbours from buffing compounds to wax. It was tricky, wasted time and was really irritating if you noticed a scratch on the stem or something after waxing and you had to change it all around again. I also would have liked a little more clearance.





So I decided it was time to upgrade things a little. Fitting more than 2 buffs onto the rod caused too much flex, so to get 3 buffs onto one arbour I needed some more support. Luckily my tool supplier recently brought out a reasonably priced fixed steady for my lathe. So with a new piece of threaded rod, a bit of machining to make a bush for the fixed steady to run on and some new 12" buffs I was away. The buffs are still running in but I think in a few weeks everything will have settled down, the dust should have stopped and I will be happy with the new system. I have more space between the buffs, a great depth around them and all 3 of my main buffs are on 1 arbour so no need to change except for special jobs.

[BigCasino]

pretty nice set up, what is that piece of equipment in the middle if you don't mind me asking?

[caskwith]

pretty nice set up, what is that piece of equipment in the middle if you don't mind me asking?

Thats the steady rest mentioned in the OP, it stops the bar flexing in the middle.

[BigCasino]

Oh ok I have never worked a metal lathe and I have little experience with a wood lathe, so I never saw one b4.

hope fully my experience level will change soon cause trying to drill stems on my bench top drill press was quite the chore today

[e Markle]

There's an error on the label of your machine. Those knuckleheads misspelled "Center" as "Centre". Silly, uh... blokes.

[pipeguy]

Nice set up Chris, I read that you were having flex issues with the bar. I use the same kind of set up instead I use a 5/8 threaded rod with NO flex issues. just a thought.

[caskwith]

Nice set up Chris, I read that you were having flex issues with the bar. I use the same kind of set up instead I use a 5/8 threaded rod with NO flex issues. just a thought.

I did almost use a larger size but to do that I would have had to buy a bigger tap/larger drills etc whereas to use M12 i had all the bits on hand. Also the little bit of flex comes in handy as tapping a perfectly straight hole of that size is hard, consequently the small error is magnified over the length of the rod, if it had been a larger size then putting the live contre on the end would not pull things into alignment but with 12mm rod you can. Plus I think even if it did go to larger size I would still want to use the steady rest as there is a lot of momentum in those wheels.

[Cory]

Could you elaborate on how you assembled your setup? What attaches the MT2 arbor and the threaded rod? Did you drill and tap the arbor?

[caskwith]

Could you elaborate on how you assembled your setup? What attaches the MT2 arbor and the threaded rod? Did you drill and tap the arbor?

You answered you own question

[caskwith]

Another little upgrade, the larger buffs created quite a "wind" that was throwing dust into my face and eyes so I built a simple little shelf to stop this and added a spare strip light onto the front, works very well and gives me perfect visibility with no glare from the light and no bits in my face.