Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Gunsmith lathe. - gear head or belt driven

That Maxturn looks like it'd be heavy! 14x40? How deep through the headstock?

We've kinda blown up Spotshooter's thread here... sorry SS! Maybe it makes the anticipation even sweeter?

Wacheon still makes these manual lathes. Now they push $30k! Parts availability was a big factor for me, though obviously I hope to never need it. I did make my own parts to fix the compound gib adjustment setup. It'd been Bubba'd beyond comprehension.

My Webb is way too deep through the headstock for a standard outboard spider. I asked some questions on the PM forum about tooling for chambering through a long headstock, and ended up inspired to make a tool based loosely off of one the late Shelly Davidson used on his Victor. First step was to put a spider on the outboard end of the spindle- not to hold the barrel, but to hold the tool. In a perfect world it'd have been a press fit on the spindle OD. In my world I ended up needing to mount it via two rows of brass-tipped jackscrews. That was a royal pain to get it running true. Not that it really needed to be, but... you know...

Here it is shown without the 4 exterior jackscrews.



The purpose of it is to lock down this tool, on the bottom shelf. It has a solid steel center shaft, which pivots on a circular bronze bushing I made on the Logan (it has a ball turner). That keeps the play to a bare minimum while allowing the shaft to pivot. It has two bushings on the OD that fit very snugly inside the spindle ID. There's a bronze center on the right end of the steel shaft that engages a barrel muzzle deep in the spindle. You adjust with the black jackscrews. The silver ones just lock things down extra-tight once it's where you want it. The part on the left with the thumbscrews is a centering bushing.



Here it is installed on the lathe:




A lot of work, but I want to be able to work through the headstock on this machine. The tool works GREAT! I can easily and predictably and very precisely adjust the position of the muzzle, then lock it down tight.

Of course,, this could also be accomplished by sleeving the barrel to make it longer and just using my outboard spider. That didn't occur to me until after I'd built this tool. I'm not the brightest candle on the cake.