Shop Built Steady Rest

[lew]

 

 

 

The one thing I didn't like about my circular steady rest was it required moving the tail stock to put it on the lathe. When turning with a drive center, I had to be extremely careful to get the piece remounted in the exact orientation to reduce the chances of it being slightly off from its original position.

 

Searching around, I found a post by Alan Stratton. Mr. Stratton's version permitted adding/removing the steady rest without having to move the tail stock. Here's a link to Mr. Stratton's website- https://www.aswoodturns.com/

 

I pretty much followed Mr. Stratton's design, making only a couple of changes along the way. 

Mr. Stratton's build-

 

 

Mine is built from scraps. I did purchase wheels and hardware. I started with a piece of red oak for the base. Cut dado's along the bottom with accompanying slots to facilitate mounting locking blocks for the wheel holders.

 

 

 

Added an alignment block so the base would be perpendicular to the ways. Then drilled for the mounting hardware. For my design, I used a cam lever to lock the base onto the ways

 

 

 

 Next was to size a couple of locking blocks that would hold the wheel mounts onto the base. Some hard maple drilled and morticed for nuts. I used nylon insert, locking nuts on the entire project. These nuts were epoxied in place.

 

 

 

 

Next was to make the base of the wheel mount. White oak here. The wheel mount base consists of three sections- bottom, locking wheel and top. Two of these are bases are required. The bottom requires holes for assembly hardware and the locking wheel-

 

 

 

Each bolt has a small maple spacer to create the cavity for the locking wheel. One corner was removed to provide clearance to turn the locking wheel

 

 

The wheel  is made from some old birch plywood left over from another project. Laid out the wheel. Divided the circle into 6 parts, cut the indentations with a forstner bit then rounded everything with a router. The bolt is epoxied into a recess.

 

the bolt will thread into the locking blocks.

 

 

Wheel in place in the wheel holder base

 

 

 

 

At this point, I forgot to take some pictures of the next couple of individual parts. Another piece of oak is drilled and mounted on to this assembly. That piece holds the uprights for the skate wheel assembly.

 

The uprights were assembled from plywood and a chunk of walnut. The 3 pieces were glued together-

 

The hole in the walnut is for a T-nut that will hold an adjustment screw

 

The notch at the lower left corner is a relief opening for tightening the nuts during assembly. The hole in the plywood is for mounting the skate wheel upright.

 

Visible T-nut.

 

 

Assembly is screwed to the base top-

 

 

Completed assembly-

 

 

Next were the skate wheel holder-

 

I miscalculated the size slightly and needed to remove a little material to allow the skate wheel assembly to have enough range of movement

 

 

Bolts, washers and skate wheels.

 

 

 

Up to this point, no dimensions were especially critical. However the next piece of the assembly needed to be 100% accurate. The upright that holds the skate wheel assembly has to be drilled so the the wheels are centered on the lathes vertical drive center point.

 

 

This piece was mounted, without the wheels, in the wheel uprights, everything fastened securely on the ways and then positioned against the drive spur point to accurately mark the exact vertical position for the wheel mounting location.

 

 

The wheel assembly ,is remounted in the uprights

 

 

 

The entire assembly fasten to the base-

 

 

The completed steady mounted on the lathe. The adjustment bolt can be seen protruding from the walnut upright piece. This was replaced with a bolt/wingnut. The bolt is used to adjust the skate wheel pressure against the turning.

 

 

 

And of course, the obligatory test run-

 

 

 

There are no dimensions listed here. There are so many variables between lathes that one size would not fit all. I do have a complete Sketchup drawing, if anyone wants it.

 

Let me know if you have questions!

 

Not sure why I can't get rid of this last picture!

 

Edited March 16, 2021 by lew

[Gunny]

@lew this is like a @steven newman post.  I am EXHAUSTED.  Can we take a potty break at least???  No coffee or anything.  

 

Great work, love the idea and implementation.  

[Fred W. Hargis Jr]

I love that Lew...very clever.

[Larry Buskirk]

9 hours ago, lew said:

Not sure why I can't get rid of this last picture!

 

Must have been one that you didn't use in the post Lew, or had double uploaded. DAMHIKT

Real trick Steady Rest. 

[Cal]

Super job Lew.

[HandyDan]

Looks great Lew.  Thanks for all the build pictures.

[lew]

3 hours ago, Larry Buskirk said:

 

Must have been one that you didn't use in the post Lew, or had double uploaded. DAMHIKT

Real trick Steady Rest. 

I thought about the double loaded pictures, Larry. I'll have to go back over the post again and look more closely.

[DuckSoup]

 That is impressive Lew! Thanks for the pics.

[Masonsailor]

Great post Lew. Thank you. I will have to build one eventually for the new lathe and that design looks like it will fit the bill nicely. Can you export the cut list in .svg format ?

Paul

[lew]

@Masonsailor, Paul I am using Sketchup Make 2017 and don't have the Sketchup Layout to be able to export an .svg file. Maybe there's another way. I'll check

[lew]

3 minutes ago, lew said:

@Masonsailor, Paul I am using Sketchup Make 2017 and don't have the Sketchup Layout to be able to export an .svg file. Maybe there's another way. I'll check

I think I may have found a way to get a vector drawing, if that will help. 

[lew]

6 hours ago, lew said:

I think I may have found a way to get a vector drawing, if that will help. 

@Masonsailor I found a work around using pdf files and adobe illustrator. For it to work, I have to export each piece individually. Will that work for you?

Edited March 15, 2021 by lew

[Masonsailor]

Yes individually would be even better. 
Paul

[lew]

Just now, Masonsailor said:

Yes individually would be even better. 
Paul

Ok I’ll work on that. Let me do one piece and see if it will work 

[FlGatorwood]

Nice post, Lew.  Well thought out process and I like that you can make all the adjustments.  Very good.  

[Masonsailor]

I will try and open the file today Lew and see what happens. If it doesn’t work I’ll start drawing it up in Fusion 360 and go from there. I like the design. For the upcoming staircase I will be turning a bunch of balusters and it will be necessary. I have a duplicator for the Shopsmith that I will have to adapt to the big lathe for that project. Unfortunately the SS won’t turn long enough spindles. 
Paul

[lew]

32 minutes ago, Masonsailor said:

I will try and open the file today Lew and see what happens. If it doesn’t work I’ll start drawing it up in Fusion 360 and go from there. I like the design. For the upcoming staircase I will be turning a bunch of balusters and it will be necessary. I have a duplicator for the Shopsmith that I will have to adapt to the big lathe for that project. Unfortunately the SS won’t turn long enough spindles. 
Paul

I can upload the the Sketchup drawing to my Google drive if you want it. I have the Fusion 360 software but I am a complete nub when it comes to using it. A LONG time ago, I did some AutoCAD stuff when helping out in the school's machine shop but all that knowledge is completely gone. Everyday, I learn something new about Sketchup, which pretty much max's out my brain capacity.

[AndrewB]

I'll probably wind up buying one of those things it will more than likely wind up being needed especially for doing longer pepper grinders.

[lew]

Some of the commercial ones are a little too salty for my limited tool budget. I have just a little over $40 invested in this one. My round one had about $15 altogether- thrift shop wheels.

Edited March 16, 2021 by lew

[lew]

4 hours ago, Masonsailor said:

I will try and open the file today Lew and see what happens. If it doesn’t work I’ll start drawing it up in Fusion 360 and go from there. I like the design. For the upcoming staircase I will be turning a bunch of balusters and it will be necessary. I have a duplicator for the Shopsmith that I will have to adapt to the big lathe for that project. Unfortunately the SS won’t turn long enough spindles. 
Paul

Paul, I see my free version of Fusion 360 can open Sketchup files I read where there is an addon to Fusion to be able to export a file in an svg format but not sure if that will work with the free version of Fusion.