Bear Meadow Shop

The Lathe

Here's my lathe. Its a Edestaal MaxiMat V7 screw machine lathe with a 3-1/2" swing. I've made several fixtures for it, including a small table saw. It's where I do all the bone sawing, since it's easy to capture the dust coming off the blade with my shop vac. I've also made a milling table which vastly extends the size of pieces I can mount on the lathe for working with the vertical mill head. For such a small lathe, it is surprisingly rugged and stable. Nevertheless, I don't challenge it with huge cuts. It's scary when this thing starts chattering--you never know what's going to bust loose (and what direction it would fly). So I go lightly.

I've also made a rotary table for this lathe. It's a small 5" table, which I got as a kit. It was a very interesting project to make, and enables me to create a wide range of tooling that depends on angular accuracy.

This is where I custom-fit the banjo tuners to the wall thickness of the peghead alley on each dulcimer. Those rosewood tuner buttons are produced here. I use this lathe to make a lot of small jigs, machines, and incidental widgets. I also do a lot of experimental work here. This lathe was invaluable in developing the engineering for FlexiFrets.

Dwain Wilder

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