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

This is what I meant by circular bushing. That's the solid steel shaft at the heart of the tool. This bushing is very precisely fitted to that shaft and in turn, the bushing OD is very precisely fitted to a cutout in the "nose" of the tool (second photo) body. The reason being (obviously) that a regular bushing, with enough slop to allow the shaft to pivot, would have two problems. First, the slop in general. Second, the case where the muzzle didn't need to be moved side to side or up or down, in which case, the steel shaft would be "floating" in the slop. The round bushing cures alla' that.

Mr. Davidson's tool used a hollow center shaft to allow for cutting fluid under pressure... however he didn't end up doing that. I had a piece of solid shaft on hand so that's what I used.

On the tool body, the first bushing needs to be a tight slide fit. That's custom to each lathe I would think. I used aluminum but bronze would be better. The second, leftmost bushing engages the mouth of the spindle which is almost always going to be dinged up from guys sliding stuff through. So that one, I went for a jam fit. Aluminum is appropriate for that.

The centering bushing is necessary for reasons that will be apparent if you build it without one, as I originally did. My next trick is to add a couple springs between that bushing and the tool body... pull the bushing to the left, to tension the springs, then tighten down the thumbscrew. Now, you have positive spring pressure keeping the bronze center on the steel shaft engaged against the muzzle while you make your adjustments. Instead of using your belly as I've been doing.






Edit: here's a pic maybe showing more clearly what the centering bushing does for you.

The bright spots to the right of the silver jacking screws are landing pads for the outboard spider screws, to lock the tool body in place in the spindle.

I made brass tipped screws to keep the center shaft pretty.







I can't wait to actually use the [bleep]' thing! I've got 3 actions slated for rebarreling this winter/spring. The practicing gunsmiths here must just be rolling their eyes at all this effort to make a big lathe usable for through-the-headstock work! Thing is, I bought the lathe to make parts on- I do lots of larger diameter stuff that was really taxing on the Logan- but this Webb is just so nice, stable, solid, and precise that I can't see using the skinny little Logan if I can use this instead!