Lathe accessories

(which soon become necessities) are like chocolates (or clamps, Ed.)—you can't have too many. Other than a router table, with all the bits and attachments, a lathe probably has more accessories than any other machine in your shop. Unlike router bits, which you can easily store in relatively little space, lathe support/enhancement tools (sounds better than accessories) come in a broad range of sizes, shapes, and weights. (which soon become necessities) are like chocolates (or clamps, Ed.)—you can't have too many. Other than a router table, with all the bits and attachments, a lathe probably has more accessories than any other machine in your shop. Unlike router bits, which you can easily store in relatively little space, lathe support/enhancement tools (sounds better than accessories) come in a broad range of sizes, shapes, and weights.

Keeping track of them gets tricky pretty quickly—especially if you hide them in a drawer, or worse yet, leave them on the bench top and then cover them up with shavings. You could stash them on a shelf or two under the bench top—then sit on the floor and move things around until you find what you're looking for.

But, if you have them out where you can find them easily without having to bend over, and where it's easy to put them back where they came from…well, you're on the path to organization nirvana, my friend. Simply fashion a board with some pegs, drill a few holes, a little glue, screw it to the wall near the lathe—up where you can reach it—and your problem's solved—right?

That's how easy it could have been, but I seldom do things the easy way. For example, rather than use just dowels, why not turn them?—out of maple. Plus, I have all this Finnish birch ply (free). And why not shellac everything once things are all assembled and sanded? See what happens? These jobs wind up an increasing spiral of complexity

One small, itty-bitty problem. Chucks are heavy, and while balanced to be symmetric about their axis of rotation, their weight distribution isn't symmetric front to back. Better slant their beefier pegs upward. The spiral begins…

Of course the layout was a wee bit time consuming. How much stuff can I pack into the minimum amount of space?

If you look at the picture below and start counting, you'll see it can store:

• two lathe chucks—with jaws
• six tool rests
• three chuck jaw sets and&hellip
• a faceplate.

You can get to any of them without having to move anything else—just slip 'em off their peg(s).

Now what about:

• drive centers
• dead centers
• a Jacobs chuck
• calipers
• Allen wrenches for the chucks
• burning wires
• an awl to poke the centers of the ends of blanks

Well, another piece of ply, a bunch of slanted holes, a few pegs, a block of wood with horizontal holes for the chuck's Allen wrenches, another block of wood with some grooves for the burn wires, a hole for the awl, and…

…Bob's your uncle.

Turning tools work a lot better if they're sharp. When the edge is gone, you can still get the gouge or chisel to remove wood—but the results won't be pretty. A grinder based sharpening system nearby would be handy—but usually what's needed is an edge touch up rather than serious grinding to reshape it.

The JoolTool is the perfect lathe bench tool for restoring or touching up a cutting edge. Small footprint, no need for special jigs—you're the jig—no grinding wheel dust to deal with, and, because it can be set up right next to where you're turning, there's no excuse not to touch up the edge as soon as you notice it beginning to dull.

However, you don't want different abrassive grits in contact with each other thus throwing them in a box or drawer is out of the question. So, once again, another piece of ply, some holes for small pegs, a shelf for the marker, and then it's “screw-it-to-the-wall” time.

As you can see in the photo, there are

• seven ninja wheels

  (that doesn't need explaining, does it?)

• a polishing wheel
• a felt wheel
• a black felt tip marker or two for marking the surface to be worked on.

Five months later, here's how my turning area has evolved. Look closely and you may actually find the lathe. Oh, you know the saying “size doesn't matter?” In turning, there's some truth to that. Except for the footprint of the tool itself, this accessory area wouldn't be any busier if the lathe was a Oneway 2436 or a Powermatic 4224.