JSWAY | Leading CNC Lathe Manufacturer & Supplier Since 2007
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!
As we have known for quite some time, the success of JSWAY in the future will depend greatly on our ability to strike a balance between valuable human insight and interaction with technology.
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On May 24, 2026, the production base of JSWAY CNC COMPANY welcomed teachers and students from Banfu No. 1 Middle School, Zhongshan City. This event combined campus education, family support, and the social responsibility of enterprises in Banfu. As a benchmark enterprise in the field of intelligent manufacturing in Zhongshan, JSWAY CNC COMPANY opens a door for students to enter the gateway of modern industrial civilisation.
The modern industrial system of the Banfu Industrial Park is being built at an accelerated pace, providing a continuous stream of momentum for the upgrading of intelligent manufacturing in the Greater Bay Area. As a “machine tool” enterprise — a true mother machine of industry — JSWAY CNC COMPANY resonates with the same frequency as the new industrial city of Banfu. By coming to JSWAY, the students, parents and teachers of Banfu No. 1 Middle School can experience the authentic face of high-end manufacturing.
In the workshop of JSWAY CNC COMPANY, Swiss‑type lathes ready for delivery undergo rigorous pre‑shipment inspections. Every machine must pass three levels of inspection – self‑inspection, cross‑inspection, and specialized inspection – followed by online laser inspection and finished‑product running‑in testing, before it can be loaded onto trucks bound for customers. The laser interferometer scans the guideways, the Renishaw ballbar checks roundness, and the coordinate measuring machine (CMM) touches every reference surface – only when all data show “green light” is the machine allowed to be shipped.
In the field of machine tool manufacturing, a well‑known saying goes: “Only a precise mother machine can produce precise machine tools.” As the “industrial mother machine,” a machine tool’s own manufacturing accuracy determines the precision of the parts it can produce. Over nearly two decades, JSWAY CNC COMPANY has forged a path toward quality based on the principle of “building top‑level machine tools with top‑level mother machines.”