want to start turning cork and eva handles, want to know what to get as far as a beginner lathe? what will I need as far a chuck, tools etc.

Check out the Grizzly hobby lathe inexpensive works great for turning grips variable speed drill works great.
Curt

here is a link by BILLY VIVONA on purchasing a lathe ....
[www.facebook.com]

Joseph,
Basically, you need

Lathe
Head stock chuck with open back so that you can run a mandrel through the headstock
Tail stock chuck (jacobs style) so that you can insert a drill bit and do drilling by holding the spinning object in the head stock chuck
Live tail stock so that you can insert the tail stock into the end of the mandrel and have it turn at the same speed as the spinning work piece.

For doing most cork and eva work, there is little need for any turning tools. For soft material like cork and eva, the turning tools will often tear up the material. However, you can certainly pick up a 4 or 6 piece set of beginner type turning chisels for not too much money.

The general rule of thumb is that you buy the lathe and then spend a similar amount for the chucks and tools to make it a working system.

A good idea to have a set of center point drill bits as well to be able to drill centering holes in mandrels or any other piece of work that you might like to have a centering hole.

Penn state industries has a good variety of reasonable tools and accessories, like chucks, tail stock accessories as well as turning tools.

[www.pennstateind.com]

[www.pennstateind.com]

[www.pennstateind.com]

Rockler is another excellent source for wood working tools:

[www.rockler.com]

[www.rockler.com]

[www.rockler.com]

[www.rockler.com]

You will notice that the prices from rockler are pretty high end, but they also carry high end tools. If you find something that you like in the rockler catalog, you can do some searches to find other sources for similar tools that are less expensive.
For turning cork and other soft materials, you do not need the quality of carbide tools that are very useful when turning hard wood.

A keyless chuck with the correct base, for example an mt2 base that would fit into an mt2 tail stock works very well for holding a drill bit at a reasonable price:
[www.amazon.com]

Although the nova chucks work very well, the standard 3 jaw machinest chuck works very well for most turning chores:

[www.amazon.com]

The key thing about buying a 3 jaw chuck with a plain back is that you will also need to buy a matching chuck backplate that will fit the head stock on your lathe. Then, unless it is made for a particular lathe and chuck you may have to have it machined for a perfect fit at a metal machine shop so that the fit is perfect on your chuck.

Here are examples of chuck back plates for plain back chucks. If you get the correct one, you may or may not need to have a clean up machining for a perfect 0 run out fit. Normally, the best thing to do, is to remove the head stock shaft from your new lathe and then screw on the new back plate. Have a machine shop then chuck the head stock and face plate in their metal lathe and have them do a final machine clean up for a 0 run out back plate so that you have a chuck that turns perfectly with 0 runout.

Good luck

Save your money. Unless you plan to turn wood, you don't need the power of a lathe.
I used to turn wood and still have the tools and old lathe.
I bought a power winder, then later, added a tool rest and tail stock to the winder.
Now, I seldom use the lathe.
Therefore, I would suggest that you invest in a good power winder or add the tool rest and tail stock to the winder you already own.

I have a power wrapper as well as a lathe, a good lathe with variable speed makes making handles so much easier, doesn't wear out the wrapper, and keeps all the dust away from your wrapper. Bought a Rikon 70-220VSR last year and really like it, hadn't used a wood lathe since high school some 50 yrs. ago. A good chuck and the accessories already mentioned as well as a sharpening system for your tools. A set of threaded mandrels is really handy. I use the reverse feature on the lathe for sanding, I guess it's not really neccesary but see the advantages here [www.youtube.com]

check out the grizzly hobby lathe. works very well for grips.

X 2 on the Hobby Lathe. I had one for years and kind of miss it as a backup.
The only "problem" with the older ones was the drill barrel diameters it would
accept -standart Milwaukee, Makita,etc would not fit without modification.
However Grizzly's Drill functioned flawlessly during the years I had the lathe
and was inexpensive.

Joseph,

The correct tooling you need to add to your lathe doesn’t depend just on WHAT you want to do with it, you also need to consider HOW you want to do it. Turning on a mandrel will require different tooling than turning on a blank. Are you going to do one or the other, or both?

Turning any square stock like EVA, cork blocks, or acrylics (without a center hole) will require a 4-jaw chuck to drill a center hole before you can mount it to a mandrel or blank.

Without knowing the specific context of the work you would like to perform, most recommendations anyone makes should be considered only as general recommendations not specific ones.

Often when considering the purchase of a new piece of equipment, most people place the proverbial cart before the horse. They buy the equipment, then try to match the accessory tooling needed to perform their tasks they want to do. Often this approach doesn’t work as well as they hope and they end up spending more money down the road replacing equipment or tooling. The smarter way to approach this is to 1) identify the task(s) needed to be accomplished, 2) match up the tooling needed for those tasks, then look for the specific equipment that is best capable of running that tooling in the way you need it to.

Actually there are some other options than using a 4 jaw chuck for center boring the stock. I turn hundreds of inserts a year, and have never deemed it necessary to have or purchase a 4 jaw one

Ron Weber

Ron Weber Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Actually there are some other options than using a
> 4 jaw chuck for center boring the stock. I turn
> hundreds of inserts a year, and have never deemed
> it necessary to have or purchase a 4 jaw one

Ron,

Yes, there are often many ways to accomplish things, some ways are better than others. People have written books on lathes and tooling options - which is just my point. Every person has a context to consider. All the original poster told us is he wants to turn cork and EVA. Turning in your shop, or my shop, might be quite a bit different than what he needs to do.

If you search through the history of lathe related posts and subtract those posts similar to this one looking for recommendations, you will notice a common theme among many of them similar to "how do I get my lathe to do this". These kinds of posts, in most cases, are the result of inexperienced people making proverbial cart before the horse equipment purchases. I'm simply suggesting to put the horse before the cart by understanding specifically what you want to accomplish, and exploring options before making significant purchases.

For example, just 15 posts ago was this post looking for lathe help: [rodbuilding.org]

Joseph, I still consider myself a novice at this hobby but if you're wanting to start turning your own cork I suggest you start with a power wrapper. I like the Pac Bay RW-3XL and it works great for so many things. To rough size the cork I found a Microplane rasp works best of all the tools I've tried. Just google for 'Microplane rasp 8" flat coarse' and you'll find it. I got mine at the Woodcraft store. Then I use 80, 120, 220 drywall screen to smooth out and get to my final size/shape and finish with 320 & 400 grit wet/dry paper.

I also made a holder for the shopvac hose so I can position it right behind the wrapper as I'm rasping/sanding and it keeps my area mostly clean.
I use a simple steel rod as a mandrel. For me, it works best to use a mandrel about 1/16 to 1/8 diameter less than the blank diameter where the cork will go. I predrill my cork to that mandrel size to minimize how much I have to ream the handle/grip. I had some problems with drilling tearing up the cork badly, but then I discovered running a brad point bit in reverse gets me a reasonably clean cut. I also made a simple wood jig to hold the cork and center the bit.
I glue up the rings on the mandrel and clamp them. I made a couple types of clamps to clamp them. The handiest clamp uses the Irwin Quick-Grip and I glue some wood blocks on the jaws to make them longer, and drilled a hole through the wood blocks for the mandrel. I just slip the rod in and squeeze the jaws shut.
I probably spend as much time experimenting with different products & methods to do things as I do building actual rods. Of course most of the ideas come from a lot of searching forums and googling in general.

I haven't tried EVA so I don't know if a wrapper and rasp works for that. I just love the wood handles I've seen guys make so eventually I wanna get a lathe and start turning wood but I think I need to refine my rod building skills more before I take that jump.

John Shear
Chippewa Falls, WI

Just an update on John's post about drilling cork. Rather than using any sort of drill, I find that the use of a simple circular file, chucked into a variable speed drill and then turning backward - yields a perfect hole with 0 tearing of the cork. Of course the reason is that the file simply abrades out the cork from the inside of the hole. When I do this, I wear a cloth glove on the hand that is holding the cork ring. As I proceed, I let the ring slip from time to time, and this action keeps the hole centered in the cork.

I do agree, that by sizing the cork to the blank before gluing makes the final reaming and sizing to go very quickly.

By the way, as John has posted about the use of a 4 jaw chuck. I do agree that one can use something other than a 4 jaw chuck to hold a square piece of material; but the use of the 4 jaw chuck makes the job trivial.

So, many of the accessories that you might buy for your lathe may not be absolutely necessary, but as is true of so many types of tools, using the correct tool for the job, makes the job go much more quickly and in the end a lot easier.

Remember, in most cases, the same job can be done in a few or many different ways; but the use of the right tool for the job makes the work go very quickly.

Good luck

Not nearly as trivial as using something like this
[www.pennstateind.com]

Ron Weber

Ron Weber Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Not nearly as trivial as using something like
> this
> [www.pennstateind.com]


Ron, if you're going to propose that, and you have to purchase that, how is that preferable to purchasing a more traditional 4 jaw chuck? Either way, your purchasing a chuck. You'd recommend someone buy a chuck with two jaws and 4 contact points over a chuck with 4 jaws and 8 contact points? I don't see the logic in that at all. That chuck is designed to hold very small objects (pen blanks) where there's no room for a traditional 4-jaw chuck. On an EVA grip the pen blank chuck's jaws would be grabbing the foam on the corner of the block where the foam has the least mass and stiffness... by comparison, jaws like these will have 8 contact points along the edges further in from the corners where the foam is stiffer. It would be nearly impossible for foam to twist out of these: [oneway.ca] (note only 3 of 4 jaws are shown for clarity purposes) Also, these have serrations which prevent the foam from falling out, the pen turner's jaws do not. This is what I mean by choosing the better tooling for the job.

Edit - A call to Penn State Industries and a chat with one of their tech's confirms they do not recommend the use of that chuck with any flexible or non-stiff soft stock.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2015 09:52AM by John E Powell.

That chuck is designed to hold a blank up to 2 1/2 inches square, and it will drill out the square foam blocks as well. As far as the round eva stock, most of them already have a hole drilled thru them. That chuck has a capability of 1/4 to 2 1/2' material.

Ron Weber

Ron Weber Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That chuck is designed to hold a blank up to 2 1/2
> inches square, and it will drill out the square
> foam blocks as well. As far as the round eva
> stock, most of them already have a hole drilled
> thru them. That chuck has a capability of 1/4 to 2
> 1/2' material.


Yes, it says so in the specs, however that's not the point. The MFG of the chuck, Penn State Industries specifically limits its use to rigid materials. EVA foam is not a rigid material. You're recommending someone use something in a way the MFG considers unsafe, that's my point.

So for the sake of argument, since you happen to be an expert on the subject and I merely added a suggestion and you appear to not agree with it, I will just leave it at that.

I realize everyone has there style and loves what they have but a good use lathe off craigs list might work and if not resell it. I picked up a shopsmith 10 for $40 and not perfect makes shaping cork and eva easier