Turning Metal in the Wood Lathe

Can you turn metal in a wood lathe? The answer is yes, up to a point. The wood lathe is far from ideal for this purpose. But many small items in brass, aluminium or steel can be turned freehand quite successfully.

Without a tool slide, accuracy comes from the turner's skill. Making true cylinders or flat surfaces accurate to a thousandth of an inch freehand is not easy. But many items don't need such precision.

Preventing chatter

The main problem is chatter, the vibration that leaves a rough surface on the work. Woodturners are familiar with chatter in turning wood; when cutting metal it is much worse. To prevent chatter, the cutting tool and the workpiece must not be able to move in relation to each other. The lathe must be strongly built, with good bearings and a rigid headstock spindle, toolrest and bed. The workpiece must be held firmly, with minimum projection from the headstock, and tailstock support should be used whenever possible, which means that headstock/tailstock alignment must be good. Light cuts using a robust and sharp tool, with minimum projection over the toolrest, should then produce an acceptable result.

If all these requirements can be met, turning can be done either with normal high speed steel woodturning scrapers or with a graver. A graver, which can easily be homemade, is similar to a woodturning point tool. It is used a bit like a skew chisel and will plane off long curly shavings from steel. Brass likes tools with zero top rake, so responds well to scrapers. These can also be used for steel. They need a short bevel and are used without a burr. Both these tools can leave a polished surface on the metal. Aluminium can be turned with a graver or even a small bowl gouge. Cutting speeds for steel should be much lower than for wood, but because only small items are really feasible, the normal low speed setting on the lathe is probably ok.

Turning steel is tiring because the tool must be held firmly up to the work. It helps to use a pivot pin in the toolrest to lever the tool into the work. This gives more control.

Safety

Turning metal can be hazardous. It is essential that the workpiece is held in the lathe firmly and safely. Chunks of steel flying out of the machine are even more likely to do you harm than are lumps of wood. Eye protection is a must. The swarf is sharp and hot - wood chips hitting your hand can be annoying, but metal swarf will cut and could even catch your fingers and drag them in. A bad dig in could wrench the cutting tool badly enough to break it and perhaps cause injury. So take care!

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