(Click on the image to proceed)
1. Marking out the faceplate
Some background to start with. I want to build a wood lathe to make wooden bowls. Wood lathes are usually powered via a set of pulleys, so that your motor can run at peak torque whilst the lathe turns at whatever speed you want. You then attach your workpiece to a flat round faceplate so that it spins round. So that's my first two problems. How do you make a round faceplate and a round pulley when you don't have a lathe?
It occured to me that I could temporarily power a lathe using my drill. It's far from ideal, but it'd work well enough to make a wooden pulley from which I can cast a metal one. It also occured to me that the faceplate doesn't need to be round. Any shape whose center of gravity is at the point of rotation will do. Again, once I have a basic lathe running I can make a conventional round faceplate too.
So, the first stage is to hacksaw a square of metal for the faceplate.
I used a piece of steel which I'd picked up from the scrapyard. I've
been practising arc-welding on it. Fortunately, the end was free of
blobs of weld.