As is customary, here’s a little bit about who I am and why I joined this forum.
I’m about 4-7(?) years away from retirement so am starting to obtain the tools I’ve always dreamed of. I’ve almost exclusively done woodworking in the last 40 years, but I very much enjoyed metalworking in my teenage years.
My main hobbies are:
Then came university, girlfriends, moving to Winnipeg from Australia, getting married, work, cottage etc. etc. etc.
I’m an Electrical Engineer by trade, though I probably should have been an Aeronautical engineer because of my aircraft interests. I did actually think of doing Aeronautical engineering but decided against it because there were very few jobs in Australia for aeronautical engineers and I didn’t want to move overseas… I get great humour from the irony that I moved to Canada… Although at work I get to design things which others construct, I find it’s nowhere near as satisfying as making something with my own hands.
My wife has a few cheap floor lamps, probably from Walmart, which she really likes. One by one they have broken and when the last one broke I said “This would be really easy to fix if I had a lathe. Which I’m going to get anyway when I retire, so I may as well advance my plans a little bit”…
For a bit of fun, here’s my lathe chronology:
It’s taken a lot longer than I though it would from ordering to getting the lathe into my workshop, but I’ve sure been enjoying the journey since the cats broke my wife’s last lamp.
I’m about 4-7(?) years away from retirement so am starting to obtain the tools I’ve always dreamed of. I’ve almost exclusively done woodworking in the last 40 years, but I very much enjoyed metalworking in my teenage years.
My main hobbies are:
- The Hawker Hurricane (Collecting drawings, photos of construction, books, a little bit of modelling)
- Working on our cottage during the warmer months (It’s been under renovation for about 30 years…)
- Classical Guitar (I’m not actively playing at the moment unfortunately)(If I do take up playing again, I’m might end up making another guitar or two when I retire?)
- Playing in the workshop…
Then came university, girlfriends, moving to Winnipeg from Australia, getting married, work, cottage etc. etc. etc.
I’m an Electrical Engineer by trade, though I probably should have been an Aeronautical engineer because of my aircraft interests. I did actually think of doing Aeronautical engineering but decided against it because there were very few jobs in Australia for aeronautical engineers and I didn’t want to move overseas… I get great humour from the irony that I moved to Canada… Although at work I get to design things which others construct, I find it’s nowhere near as satisfying as making something with my own hands.
My wife has a few cheap floor lamps, probably from Walmart, which she really likes. One by one they have broken and when the last one broke I said “This would be really easy to fix if I had a lathe. Which I’m going to get anyway when I retire, so I may as well advance my plans a little bit”…
For a bit of fun, here’s my lathe chronology:
- 1982: Steven plays with a lathe at high school.
- 1996: Steven moves to Winnipeg from Australia. Our “starter” home is tiny and my workshop is maybe 10’x12’. I probably could have squeezed a tiny lathe in there, but all my tool budget was spent on tools to work on the cottage.
- 2013: We FINALLY move out of our starter home and my workshop greatly expands to about 1/4 of the basement.
- 2018 summer: My wife’s lamp breaks, and I start seriously thinking about getting a lathe, something small and relatively inexpensive like a Taig or Sherline. (No, I didn’t purposely break the lamp, the final breakage was curtesy of the cats…).
- 2019, July: After a most enjoyable year of investigation, I place an order for a 12”x24” gear-head lathe (a Precision Mathew’s PM-1224T)(a 24” bed version of their PM-1236T) This was quite a change from “relatively small and inexpensive”, and for this I have my fitter-machinist brother-in-law to thank.
- 2019, Early Winter: I show my wife a picture of what the “lathe I’ve ordered to fix your lamps” looks like. It would take several pages to describe the next part of the story, so I’ll just say that her reaction was what I was expecting, and also not what I was expecting.
- 2019, December: My lathe arrives in North America, but I still have a few projects in my workshop so the company agrees to store it for two months. Around February/March they shut down as Covid spreads…
- 2020, April 28: My lathe finally arrives in Winnipeg!!! I am amazed at how heavy 900lbs is and I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to get this into the basement. I’ve got plenty of time to work that out though, since cottage season is starting up, my woodworking tools are heading to the cottage and I’m not going to have much time to play with a lathe anyway.
- 2020, Thanksgiving: Finally the cottage is shut down, and I can start putting my plans into action.
- 2020, November: I WAY over prepare for moving the lathe. I probably spent enough money on lumber for the ramps to winch the lathe into the basement that I could have purchased a spare Sherline lathe.
- 2020, Mid November: Winnipeg moves to pandemic level red and any thought of having friends help me with the move is put on hold.
- 2021, July: Finally COVID numbers are dropping and I can have friends help me, but it’s cottage season now, and all my tools are at the cottage…
- 2021, late September: Work is settling down, cottage season is drawing to a close, my tools are back in Winnipeg and finally I move the lathe downstairs. It goes mostly smoothly, except for the last part. The last part where I lifted the lathe off the ramp at the bottom of the stairs and the lifting straps slipped was terrifying. I had designed the ramps so they could be split and lowered to give me more headroom to crane the lathe off the ramp, but it was a long day, I was getting tired and naturally this is when shit happens… All’s well that end’s well though, no one was hurt, my lathe is not damaged and it’s safely in the basement.
- 2021, December: I’ve assembled the lathe on the stand. Learn’t how to lift the lathe up with pry-bars and wedges to get wheels underneath it and rolled it into it’s final location.
- 2022, March 18: The lathe has been run in and I finally use the lathe to turn something.
It’s taken a lot longer than I though it would from ordering to getting the lathe into my workshop, but I’ve sure been enjoying the journey since the cats broke my wife’s last lamp.
