Hrelgar's Lathe Project


I recently got interested in making a medieval style lathe. I looked around the web and found a few sites with lathe history and recreations. I found Tom Rettie's lathe design the most appealing so I modeled mine based on his. My persona is from the Viking period so I decided to use a spring pole lathe design rather than using a wheel to drive the work since the wheel seemed to be a late period invention.

So last month I consulted with one of our friendly neighbors,  and began work on my lathe. Well last weekend I got it to the point where I could try it out! It still needs a lot of work but it was nice to actually make something with it. I was amazed that it actually worked.

Anyway, here is a picture of it:


and here is a picture of the first thing I made, a simple turned spindle-like thingy:

The springiness is currently provided by a couple of bungie cords. The work left to do includes:
 


It was such a nice day today, I decided to work outside.
 
 

I replaced the bungie cords with a nice piece of ash. I also started working on a candlestick out of pine. It was incredibly noisy until I tried putting a drop of oil on the centers. This quieted it down considerably and made the turning smoother. 
The work went quickly. I broke the string a couple of times so I need to find something a little stronger. 
Here's the candlestick I made