It only took me 15 months...

[SnailPowered]

Well, after being home from Afghanistan for roughly 15 months and having had my lathe sitting in the shipping crate for all that time I finally pulled the top off and looked inside! My birthday was this past Saturday and my parents came out to visit so my dad helped me start prepping the lathe to be up and running.

First we scoured Craigslist for a table or bench that we could mount the thing on and thought about possibly looking at a couple other places. We found a bench on Craigslist for $100 that was big and heavy and at 3'x6' (or roughly 0.9m x 1.8m ) was more than large enough. After seeing the table we decided that maybe it wasn't what we wanted but couldn't pass it up for $50. The seller agreed and into the truck it went.

From there we took it home and scrounged some things from my back yard to begin prepping it for lathe use. I won't bore you all with all of the details but will attach plenty of pics and be happy to answer any and all questions!

Thanks for viewing!

[Mayhem]

Welcome back!

That looks like a good starting point and I look forward to seeing more progress (i.e. pictures).

[EdK]

Welcome back Snailpowered! What lathe did you end up getting?

Ed

[Sunset Machine]

Looks like you poured concrete on top to stiffen things up a tad. Not a bad idea!

[stevec]

Snail! looks good! maybe a bit of overkill for the ole Craftsman/Atlas but I seem to remember you did an upgrade? But I searched your older posts (as best the software of this site permits?) and couldn't find anything.
In any event that concrete will give an already sturdy looking lathe stand more mass to absorb vibrations.
Keep the pics of progress coming.

[DaveH]

Welcome back SnailPowered.
Looking forward to the pics.

DaveH

[doubleboost]

That looks substantial

John

[SnailPowered]

Well I got it set up on the bench one some all thread for legs. I'm going to fill in under the board with dry-pack. Apparently dry-pack (which is 1 part cement, 2.5 parts sand and just enough water to make it stick together) shrinks very uniformly and most importantly, hardly shrinks. Once the dry-pack dries I will take the lathe off, lift the board off and then place the lathe onto the new, hopefully level, platform.

Thanks for all the encouragement guys! I'm glad to be back and hopefully I will have some projects to share soon! I'm planning on trying to make a smaller version of one of the energetic tools I use at work. .50 BMG is the dimensions of 30-06 blown up so I want to make a .30 caliber version of our .50 caliber MK2 Mod 1 dearmer (pronounced de-armer). I plan on making mine out of steel just like the real deal.

Here is a site that sells a 1/2 scale MK2 Mod 1; http://www.bombsawayinc.com/m182.html

[racer-john]

Welcome back Snailpowered. Good to have you back from serving your country.

[SnailPowered]

I got it onto the bench and leveled. Used the dry-pack and that stuff hardened up SOLID I'm really impressed. I then got it firmly bolted to the bench, checked the levels again and then wired up the motor. The giddiness of firing up my lathe for the first time and having it spin was AWESOME! I have no idea what the different tooling that I have is or which one to use so there are many hours of video watching in my near future to understand WTF is going on. I can't wait though! I have two micrometers (one of which has a run out dial) and a set of calipers that the second owner of the lathe (I'm third) sent me. My brother actually gave me the micrometer with the run out dial for Christmas, the other came with the lathe.

Anyway, no one cares about the words so ON with the pictures