Reposting this question from a tag-end question that didn’t get answered on another thread…
For you pipemakers that are turning wood on a metal-turning lathe, what sort of toolbits are you using, and have you changed the angle that the toolbit presents to the work material? Also, what revolution speeds are you using?
Best Regards,
dave boling
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I in fact do all my turning with metal turning bits in the toolpost, I don’t use any hand tools. You only need to grind about three shapes to do most of the stuff you need for pipes.
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I’m not sure there is an advantage! I first tried turning in my teens and found the whole lore of sharpening gouges and chisels ect beyond me. I bought my lathe from a well known pipemaker and that is how he worked. I tried the system and it worked well for me. It does have the advantage that you only need one machine and and about 3 bits for everything. Also, it is a very controllable way of working. As for fun? Well you still bring up the wood beautifully if that’s what you mean. For me the fun is in getting the tone and tuning after the piece is made. The thing is, I don’t regard myself as a traditional woodturner, but more of a jack of all trades and master of none! What I know is enough of everything to make a set of pipes. For instance, I make stitched leather bags and bellows, but I couldn’t make a saddle! I think whatever works for the individual is fine.
I agree with Brendan. I also use my lathe for turning the wooden parts as well as the metal parts and the required tools. There is no real difference in the degree of fun. You have to control the shape of your turning piece - that’s it. The fun is to watch how the instrument gains its shape - and to know what to do to make it sound like an uilleann pipe 
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Hi Kevin,
I didn’t think you were making a value judgement. As I say I’m not a woodturner but I wish I was. Then I’d just make beautiful things out of beautiful woods, things that people could just look at and didn’t have to be in tune!
Wish I had a gig like that!
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Whatever works…personally I like the intimacy of hand turning…even the mistakes become cherished…However!! I would love to own a metal lathe as well for making tools and some other bits-n-pieces..but I find it’s simply an unnecessary expense!
Davey,
You just reminded me that one of the main advantages is toolmaking! Reamers are damn expensive and it’s a great comfort, if also a pain to make your own!
Brendan..I absolutely agree on the reamer point! Not to mention other various and sundry tools…I WOULD dearly like to have a metal lathe…I’m stuck HAND grinding and filing my reamers for now…that’s ok..as a great friend of mine says..the metal is “cheap as chips”…and it’s just a bit of elbow grease!..well…maybe more than a bit!
Isn’t wood turning kinda hard on your equipment(metal lathe). I’ve read that it can cause the teeth on the gears to chip..I was thinking of purchasing a inexpensive wood lathe to knock the corners off, then finish up on the metal lathe…
Mike
I purchased my first metal lathe in 1978 because I had seen one like it in the workshop of a very well-known recorder maker in Brookline, Mass. There it was being used with a template system to do repetitive turning. The outlines being generated were quite complex, and that was proof enough for me that it was possible to use this method to turn anything that might be required for a set of uilleann pipes. As things worked out, I never did get around to modifying my little Atlas lathe for this type of production turning. However, it very quickly proved its value in toolmaking. With only a few minor modifications, it also became an indexing and milling device. I have used it to drill tone holes and mill key slots on every chanter and regulator I’ve made since 1979.
As far as generating the shapes we see in the turned parts of the pipes is concerned, I am in the hand turning camp. However, as Breandan Ring and others here have said, it certainly is possible to do good work that is also pleasing to the eye using a metal lathe. I probably spend more hours each week at the wood lathe than at the metal lathe, but if I had to have only one lathe, it would be the metal lathe. Having more than one lathe is a convenient luxury, but my little metal lathe can be rigged to work as a hand lathe for traditional wood turning much more easily than the wood lathe can be rigged for precise boring and turning of odd-sized cylinders or for cutting the complex curves and tapers called for in reamer making.
David,
Do you ever have problems with cast polyester getting in the gears and bits of the metal or wood lathe? I try to avoid the stuff, and stick with boxwood. I’m just curious what effect the stuff might have “long term” on a production machine shop.
Thanks,
DB
It’s too soon to tell. I’ve only been using cast polyester for about 5 years. Let’s agree to meet here in 20 years and compare notes.
My gut feeling is that boxwood chips and dust may be just as wearing as the plastic snow, but I have no evidence upon which to base that statement. If one could finish the materials without using abrasives, I think that would eliminate the major cause of wear to machine parts, but I pretty much depend on abrasive papers, tripoli and the like.
[ This Message was edited by: DMQuinn on 2003-03-02 10:44 ]
(bump)
See DMQuinn’s discussion of metal vs. wood lathe on previous page.
Admittedly I only make Northumbrian smallpipes, not uilleann, but I wish to add that you can do both “metal” turning (using bits held in a cross-slide) and “hand” turning (using hand-held gouges and such) on a metal lathe. All you have to do is rig up a hand turning tool rest on the metal lathe cross-slide. Indeed, some actually come with that as an accessory. Often the angle is a bit tricky to get used to and not as convenient as on a wood lathe, but it works great once you get the hang of it. So if I had only one lathe, it would be my metal lathe, since it can do it all.
I also use a very strong vacuum right at the source of turning to try to prevent chips, dust, and abrasives from fouling up the works.
Basicaly I do all my work on a second hand Record £50 job, put a new set
of bearing in it bought a new four jaw chuck, my mate made a steady post
which works fantastic for centre boring, my reamers my wife’s friends husband knocked out for thirty pounds at work, his employers do work for the RAF everything is made to precision made them in his spare time, there just made out of ground bar steel they do the work fine, the lathe is mounted on a good sturdy wood bench made out of four by three inch timber frame and a thick kitchen work top, there’s not a bit of vibration, PITY 
, but to work with a woodturning lathe you have to learn how to woodturn, check out your local Colleges or tool suppliers they have places were you can get lesson’s, I went to college on friday monings for two years, Lathes can be very things if you don’t know what your doing especialy when your centre boring, I still think a better product is turned out on a woodlathe, woodlathes produce variable speeds from 200rpm up to 2000-3000rpm
will give a much superior finish to the wood than a metel turning lathe, there top speeds being around 1400-1500rpm which some pipemakers use, roughing out wood on a woodturning lathe is done in a fracture of the time it doing it on a metal turning lathe, I’m not saying a metal work lathe
has’nt got its use’s like making regulaters and chanters, a good woodturning lathe can be picked for £100-150 and with some new pieces
say a four jaw chuck £150 say £300 in total and your ready for action,but at the end of the day it comes down to skill, 18th century makers use old pole lathes and look at the cracking stuff the turned out,“every one to there own”. all the best