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A little private lathe tutoring in my shop


Wm. R. Robertson

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My friend and fellow poster on the forum, Althea, had a project in mind that required some lathe work. She is a knitter, not one that normally uses machine tools or works to tolerances of a thousandth of inch. But like many skilled artists she took to this like a duck to water...... She wanted to do sort of face plate type turning so I set her up with a lathe I made based on a classic Japanese design with the spindle facing the operator. I used a Taig headstock and a jewelers 6 jaw bezel chuck.... It is a sweet little lathe for this kind of work.....

And to start off, I feel you have to get a lesson in the basic proportion of turnings, and the best place to start is with Plumier's book from 1701, it was the first book ever written solely about the lathe and I happen to have a rare first edition..... So her she is studying a 313 year book...... And turning...... And success!

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I had such fun!  How lucky am I that I got to play in Bill's workshop?!?  And yes, it is just as amazing as you would think!

 

Bill is a marvelous teacher...very patient, kind and encouraging. I learned so much. 

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  • 3 months later...

Plumier's book on the lathe is available online at archive.org as a free download in several file format verions.  We are very fortunate that museums and libraries are scanning these rare old books and making them available for free for anyone to read. There are now many such treasures we can enjoy and more are being scanned every month. Not the same of course as holding a 300 year old book in your hands but at least we can enjoy the contents.

 

https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_yRsLuVCA2y0C

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Thanks for the link Karin, it is interesting in their copy some of the plates are out of order, also when the scan stuff they almost never unfold the big plates. Often in books of this age they would print a lot illustrations on a much larger piece of paper and mount it in the binding. Then the reader could unfold it.

I agree it is nice to have these online, but nicer to hold in your hand if you can.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thanks for the link Karin, it is interesting in their copy some of the plates are out of order, also when the scan stuff they almost never unfold the big plates. Often in books of this age they would print a lot illustrations on a much larger piece of paper and mount it in the binding. Then the reader could unfold it.

I agree it is nice to have these online, but nicer to hold in your hand if you can.

Perhaps someday you could get a grant to have some of your rare books digitized the way they ought to be done.  Without of course doing any harm to your collection.

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