Refer to video below
I'm going to introduce today the metal lathe. This is a small bench version lathe and I sometimes refer to it as the 'Standard-Modern' because that is the manufacturer of this machine. This is one of the most convenient little machines we have, and there are two of these in the shop. They are ideal for polishing the edges on rings - of band rings for jewelry as well as drilling holes and facing small round or circular items that you may use to build your projects.

So, the first thing we are going to talk about is the operation - which includes safety of this machine. Now, the first thing you should know about this machine is how to turn the power on to it. Underneath this table here is the main power switch, and when you push that you'll hear a big thump. That means now there is power to the machine - and there's also a switch right here which will direct the machine to go either forward or reverse. I'm going to turn it to forward. What that does is it makes the chuck spin. This is usually the area that we hold our work pieces in. Remember I told you, anything round can fit easily into and be held by this chuck. Now if I turn it to reverse it's going to make the chuck revolve away from me - and that's not necessarily what we want to do for most of our operations in this machine.

Now, because you've seen this machine and the moving parts associated with it, you need to consider the safe operation, that is - make sure you have eye protection on, make sure you understand the operation of this machine before you use it. And secondly, make sure loose clothing as well as long hair are tightly wrapped away from the machine.

This center part of the machine is called the carriage, and there's a couple of hand-wheels on here - and usually this is the location where we keep our tools. You can take a cut and remove some of the outside of
the material of your piece by installing a proper tool in the tool post. And this tool-post can be loosened and turned and swiveled to any angle to compliment any task you are doing.

The carriage moves longitudinally (or lengthwise) using this hand-wheel - and I can move the tool-post in and out using the crossfeed hand-wheel.
You'll notice that there are markings on here which indicate the amount of movement. This one is a metric machine so these markings will indicate fractions of a millimeter.
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