Wood Lathe Maintenance – DON'T Do These 6 Things Video

it's time we talk about wood lathe maintenance don't do these things i'm about ready to share with you [Music] hi i'm kent and welcome to turn a wood bowl i'd like to say that i'm really meticulous about maintaining my lathe but the truth is i usually don't think about it until something's acting up on the lathe usually it's my banjo and i go to move my tool rest and it doesn't want to slide i loosen the the banjo lock and i gotta force it around and start get frustrated and then i finally give in and i say you know what it's time to stop and clean the lathe and clean the rails and do all the maintenance we need to do on the lathe now the really cool thing about it is it doesn't take that long but you get really great results especially if you've experienced that stuck banjo and having to force it around on your laid that's not fun but it only takes a little bit to take care of that so i've got six things for us to not do when we are dealing with lathe maintenance and number one is don't ignore your owner's manual now i know i know boring i hear you the owner's manual can seem really really boring i totally get it but guess what there's some little hidden gems in here and you don't have to look at the whole manual if you don't want to just fast forward to the maintenance section and look there because you're probably going to find specific maintenance recommendations for your lathe that might be different than mine lathe so you're going to want to check that out first your manufacturers is going to give you the best advice for taking care of your particular lathe now if you have a second hand lathe or if you bought a lid for at a garage sale or you just don't have your manual well guess what the internet has pretty much every manual for anything that's ever been manufactured and all you have to do is search the manufacturer and the model of your lathe and then in the search also include manual or owner's manual it's that simple you're probably going to find your manual pretty quick it's usually in a pdf form so you can print it out and you can bring it out to your shop just like this and you can go through it and you can see all those details for your specific lathe okay tip number two don't leave a mess around blow away any debris and if you have any rust on any of your equipment you can use this sand flex block this works really well for basically scraping away any rust or debris that you have on metal surfaces you can also use a product like top saver this product will break away rust and it'll it'll dissolve it on metal surfaces this is also great for band saw or your table saw surfaces if you've got rust on those you can spray this on it and you can use some steel wool or you can use a sand a sand flex block to scrape away that rust either way you want to not leave messes around whether it's dust shavings or rust you want to clean up your messes okay number three is don't forget about hidden places now specific to my lathe and the instruction manual that i have for my lathe they informed me that i need to clean out the pulley underneath this belt and that requires loosening the motor lifting it out of place and moving the belt aside so that i can clean any debris that might be trapped underneath that if you can see i have a a grooved belt here so any debris in there could cause issues with the belt all right another forgotten about hidden place is the morris taper what you can do is you can simply take a small stick and a piece of cloth and wrap it around that and clean out the morris taper really well we don't want there to be any debris inside the morse taper because it could potentially make the fittings or the chucks that you put in here or the drives off centered and turn inaccurately so we want to keep that as clean as possible so we can clean out the morris taper real well make sure there's no debris or anything that's left inside there okay number four don't tolerate any friction if your banjo is giving you troubles moving doesn't want to move freely that's not acceptable what we need to do is we need to clean our rails really well i'm using a uh four ott or zero zero zero zero steel wool and i'm gonna clean these rails really well and make sure there's no debris or any any nicks or anything of that nature clean those really well and i'm going to take the tail stock and the banjo off the lathe i'm going to make sure these rails are nice and clean and now i have the tail stock upside down and i'm going to clean the contact areas where the tail stock rides on the rails and you can actually see there's a little build up right here let me get down in all those little grooves clean those out really well i'm going to look on the sides of the locking mechanism here as well and i'll do the same with the banjo there's a product called tool cleaner that works really good for breaking up some of this debris cleaning surfaces by the way i'll have a link for all these products in the description below so check that out go look at the description below and i'll have all the products marked there if you like this video do me a huge favor click that like button it helps my channel out with the youtube youtube algorithm and it would do me a huge favor if you could click that like button i would greatly appreciate that while i'm down here i'm going to spray a little silicone on this this shaft so that the locking mechanism will slide a little bit freer on that a great product to use to lubricate the rails and the bed of the lathe is a simple paste wax and the way this goes on is basically you just rub some in let it set for a few minutes and then we're going to buff it out i'm going to also apply some to the bottom of the tail stock and the bottom of the band room and this just needs to go on the edge that will be contacting the rails of the lathe so now let's see if that made any difference that's just it just floats around now fantastic and we'll put the tail stock up also very smooth another place to lubricate is the quill of your tail stock what you can do is extend the quill the quill out and then you can spray it with lubricant that'll help that ease in and out of the tail stack a lot easier if you have more troubles with your tail stock the quill will come out all the way and you can clean the entire portion of the tail stock but that's not something you need to do on a regular maintenance basis unless you're having problems with the tailstock so i run this in and out a few times and it helps get that lubricant on the quill okay number five don't be a cross threader what do i mean by that pay attention when you're attaching a chuck or a face plate or any other accessory to the headstock threads bring the chuck or whatever you're putting on the headstock up to the headstock and then turn the hand wheel don't turn the chuck turn the hand wheel until the chuck is seated that way you've got a nice nice smooth connection with the threads the whole way where people get in trouble and one of the best ways to really get in trouble is to lock the headstock have a chuck or worse have a face plate with a large bulb blank on it come up here and start fiddling with it and try to get it started and you're going to start damaging threads okay so two things you want to look for is you want to keep your chucks and your face plate threads clean you could take a soft wire brush like this brass wire bristle brush and make sure that those those threads are cleaned out you can also take the air compressor and blow air through there and clean those out on a regular basis that's going to prevent there from being any catches in there or any debris that's going to cause any damage to the threads now in the event that you see a scratch or a nick on your head stock threads what you're going to want to do is you're going to fix that as quickly as possible i found this nice little metal file that will fit inside these threads and what can be done is you can take and you can smooth out an area that's been scratched or damaged and bring your head stock threads back to new so that they will accept all of your chucks but you want to be really careful with this with the threading here and make sure this whole area stays clean as well number six don't tolerate any bumps or knocks your tool rest is your physical connection and your stability while you're turning anything on the lathe and if the tool rests compromised in any way it's going to interrupt your connection with the wood that you're turning so if your tool rest has any nicks or scratches or bumps in it and you're gliding your your tool across there you're going to feel those nicks and they're going to change the path of your tool we don't want that so what you're going to need to do is inspect the top edge of your tool rest if you find a nick or an issue take a metal file and work that file across the area until you've smoothed out that nick and made it just completely continuous and as smooth as possible now this particular tool rest is made by robust and this is a hardened steel bead on here so believe it or not i don't have any nicks on here so i'm not going to start grinding or trying to file this with this particular file if your tool rest is a cast tool rest there's a chance you're going to find some nicks and scratches in there if that's the case you're going to just want to systematically move down the tool rest and smooth it out so you've got a nice surface for your bowl gouge or whatever tool you're using to glide across uninterrupted you do not want the tool rest and the bumps from those nicks and those cracks to interrupt your process while you're turning there you have it there are six things to not do when it comes to wood lathe maintenance and i know doing maintenance on your lathe is not the most exciting thing it's definitely not as exciting as turning a wood bowl but it needs to be done and you need to do it in intervals where it's not too long so that you start having issues with your banjo or your tail stock not moving freely and you want to make sure that you get everything running properly and keep it all in tune and hopefully this video showed you how to do that now all the items that i used in this video plus some other optional items are going to be listed in the description below there's links for those if you want to go check those out if you've liked this video do me a huge favor and click that like button if you're not subscribing click the subscribe and click the bell because you'll be notified when my next new video comes out and leave me a comment let me know do you clean your lathe or do something different or better yet have you researched your manual and found a maintenance recommendation that's a little bit different than what i showed you here and if you have leave me a comment below and let me know what that is i'd be curious to find out what you what you do differently with your lathe alright guys well thank you so much for watching and until next time happy turning [Music] you

Channel: Turn A Wood Bowl

Views: 30,287

Rating: 4.9635415 out of 5

Keywords: Wood Lathe Maintenance – DON'T Do These 6 Things Video, wood lathe maintenance, lathe maintenance, wood lathe, lathe cleaning procedure, cleaning lathe bed, cleaning lathe chuck, cleaning lathe ways, wood turning, turn a wood bowl, kent weakley, bowl turning, woodturning tools, woodturning lathe, lathe cleaning, lathe lubrication, wood lathe for beginners, morse taper, tailstock cleaning, quill cleaning, quill lubrication, banjo cleaning, banjo, stuck

Id: MeD-7kodVzg

Length: 16min 1sec (961 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020