Turning Brass on Wood Lathe

This videos goes over the method for turning metal, specifically brass, on a wood lathe. this involves making turning tools and making a safty gaurd for the lathe.
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[@bradleytuckwell4854]

Well I just got schooled.I’m So glad I stumbled onto your channel.It’s been very entertaining. And so different from all the other channels.I’ve got a lot to catching up and I’ll be enjoying every minute. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge

Happy you are enjoying the chanel!

[@brianmeanor7907]

For real huh she says she’s only 21 ???wtf I was a dumb screw up at 21 lol

[@matthewfinch616]

That is a beautiful hammer!! I love the wood ring inserts on the head. Great idea!!

Thank you! Its my 3rd revision of these hammers that I originally designed a year ago. I really love them. I end up using them all the time for every small adjustments in setups or machines and for driving punchs and so on. My next apron will have a spot to keep one.

[@unopine]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I wanted to turn brass on my wood lathe to make parts for a home made leather crafting maul. Your video was the first suggestion, and is as comprehensive as I could have hoped for, answering every question I had. Your fabrication skills are amazing, and you combine them with an artistic flair to create functional shop tools that are works of art! Thank you again for taking the time share your work.

Glad to see you enjoyed the video! Being able to turn brass has been a game changer for me

[@cyrilnorrie8450]

Wow, you have skills man! I enjoyed this video and I'm so impressed with the hammer you made. Thanks for sharing.

[@BiggMo]

Nice to see you back...missed you and thanks for sharing this with us.

Thanks for watching! Hopefully il be able to upload more frequently in the future!

[@L98fiero]

Wow, impressive, not only doing a beautiful job on the hammer including the engraving but making a professional looking set of gravures and a professional looking chuck guard to get it done. Lots of skill, talent and drive!

[@charlespilot847]

Good job.

[@TheSkiggly]

I totally enjoyed this build.

[@Dommy2Hotty]

Skiggly!

[@Dommy2Hotty]

Should have said I'm on Makers Playground (Dominic Cesare).

[@TheSkiggly]

@@Dommy2Hotty It took me a bit to put them together, but yesterday it hit me.

[@markhedquist9597]

Without a doubt you know your stuff and know what you are doing. In reading through the comments, I see a number of people want to tell you how wrong you are, how you are screwing up... Your responses should be sufficient for all. Nothing wrong with having a conversation, of course. And they've been respectful, for the most part... Well, anyway... You know how one can get way off into the procedure/technical stuff/etc... and get so far away from the artistic aspect of creating? I feel like yours is a nice blend of the two. It's quite refreshing for me to watch your videos, if for no other reason, to be reminded that the end justifies the means. The huge bonus to watching is seeing your amazing works and the random silliness. The latter is where life actually resides.

[@tomsheahan9594]

Absolutely beautiful piece. Such talent and skills. Well done.

Thank you!

[@ericg01]

I am speechless... Just beautiful!

[@edition-deluxe]

7:50 damn! I appreciate all the little extra tips and advice along the way.

[@rihanwoodworks7123]

What a remarkable work! its turns absolutely beautiful!

[@nhayler76]

That’s a great hammer. Love it 👍🏻

[@juswoodshop]

Great video Eloise

[@Karpe_Deem]

I gotta ask, where do you get brass in Montreal? 🤔 McMaster Carr is out of reach. I just want brass tubings for the ferrule

[@chipito13]

Cool! Great music too!

[@nilavinte_kamukan]

6:25 this type of small chuck where to buy in india.plz reply sir.

[@michelpicard5191]

Tu m’étonne toujours. C’est très bien expliqué. Bravo

[@Cnthib57]

When I seen the title I was like okay got to see this. I use my carbide tools when I throw some brass in my lathe, but I am not making anything like you are. I turn some round "3/4 for some pen displays at about "1/2 long. Pretty cool hammer, good job.

I've never had the chance to try it with carbide! and thank you!

[@brianmeanor7907]

Where did you gain all this knowledge at such a young age ????

[@gpgpgpgp1000]

I tried turning aluminum round stock on a wood lathe once. Also acrylic. Like an idiot, I just used the wood turning tools. I thought that the steel would turn aluminum and acrylic no problem! While I could turn the stuff, it looked like junk because of the tool bouncing occasionally and taking out large chips. Watching other videos later, I realize I was lucky I didn't severely hurt myself!

[@kellyvcraig]

I turn a lot of acrylic with my high speed steel knives. I posted info on process on the Instructables site at: www.instructables.com/Making-Light-Catching-Laminated-Wood-Plastic-and-C/ I do find my carbide scraper works nice for some of the projects. Before switching to them, I had to sand and polish the acrylic. After, it was a done deal when I set the knife down.

[@Devon.Martin]

Great information. Thanks for sharing.

[@jeremyandelisha]

Good job. One thing, I turn aluminum on my wood lathe all the time. Even mild steel with a carbide tip cutter. Watch for hot shavings though.

Thats interesting! I tried aluminum and although it did make chips I could not achieve any production of quality parts. I will need to try with carbide for steel!

[@bodeine454]

Which metal is easier to turn on a wood lathe, aluminum or brass?

[@thomas_vera]

You should change the title for : "How to create your own tool to turn brass on a wood lathe that has been upgraded to be safely used. [This video is brought to you by ebenisterie Eloïse tools limited]" that would be more accurate! Except this huge disappointment, very nice and versatile video, I really enjoyed it!

[@taiwanluthiers]

I am a woodworker, I build guitars in fact. I bought an engine lathe anyways because it's very easy to adapt an engine lathe to turn wood than the other way around. Plus having the auto feed and being able to cut threads is very useful, allowing me to make jigs and fixtures to do woodworking type things.

That's definitely a good idea! Thought metal lathes are usually much more expensive and smaller (for hobby ones). Did you modify it to get higher rpms? My engine lathe tops out a bit low for wood (it's an old atlas 10", probably tops out at 600rpm)

[@taiwanluthiers]

@ Mine tops out at 1800 rpm, it's a 16 inch victor lathe. I thought most engine lathes top out at 2000 rpm unless it has a larger swing...

[@prawny12009]

No way to bolt a small x y table to the lathe?

[@rhocass]

Lovely work! Quite daring technique as well~~

[@bethoughtprovoking]

I’m impressed with your engineering skills, though I do suggest you invest in a metal lathe if you’re serious about producing metal objects of beauty. I had a look at your site. Quite impressive-your artistic skills, I mean. I wish you all the best in your creative endeavours!

Thank you! I do own a metal lathe now but I still use the wood lathe a lot for metal as it lets me make curves that are either really hard or impossible to make a on small metal lathe. The best option would be a metal cnc lathe but that's a lot of $$ and not as much fun :P

[@blueridgedsia]

would carbide do ok for this? Not as sharp as HSS but definitely more dense.

I am not sure, I expect that it wouldn't work as well since carbide usually prefers high feeds and speeds but I have not tried it.

[@dolfinmagikpro]

Great video! Thank you for the explanation on how to do this. Are you sure this wouldn't work on copper? Just curious if you have tried. It seems to me that if copper were annealed, it might work. Do you anneal the brass rods before turning? Keep up the great work! And of course ... Have a better day!

Thank you! I tried copper a few times and it wasn't great. It works in a pinch but brass gives much better results. Copper is too gummy to give nice results in my experiance. And no, the brass is machined as is. This is 360 brass

[@jenrizar660]

That’s awesome 👏 😮

[@christiandelahousse]

This is a super helpful video! I am so glad to see the topic tackled! I was looking up how to cut brass on the wood lathe but haven't come across any other that was this info filled. Thanks! A few questions: 1) do you have any books or references you can point towards that would cover brass cutting tooling like this? 2) Do you know of anywhere I could buy these turning chisels? 3) Have you tried turning other soft metals?

Glad you found it helpful! No I don't have any reforances, sorry! My technique is a combination of my knowladge on wood turning, machining and most of all, a lot of trial and error! If you have any specific quetions feel free to contact me on my instagram or email me at [e-mail] and I will do my best to anwer them! I don't know of chisels ment for this out of the box. If there are some they are probably designed for jeweller's lathes but from what I know they mostly make their own or use hss blanks. You can always modify lathe tools though. I would probably start with parting tooks and regrind them from there. I've done aluminum but its not as smooth at all. It wants to stick. About the same story is true for copper. Maybe lubrication woupd help though!

[@dolfinmagikpro]

Greetings! You can take the chisels that are made for regular metal working lathes and use them for this. You would just need to make a longer handle for them, as most are short (

[@levjas]

Very impressive.

[@cman_1492]

how did the edge of your tool hold up?

Really well! I dont sharpen them more often then my wood turning gouges usually

[@michaelidarecis]

Turning brass on a wood lathe is like using gravers on a jewlers lathe. From the rest to the part you are turning the rest needs to be closer to avoid chatter and safer. Also look at graver bits you can do a lot with them.

Thats true! Although since the tooling I made is much larger than a jewlers lather graver, I can take off more material per pass as well have the toolrest further form the work (since the mechanical advantage and grip of the larger tools let them stay much more stable). I will look into typical graver geometry, I copied more what is seens on metal lathes and didn't bother much with looking into jewelers lathes. Thanks for the advice

[@KarellSteMarie]

Where did you get that awesome tool rest? I love the curve that leaves enough space for the fingers - I'd like to get one for myself. J'ai adoré ce vidéo, avec un tel niveau d’habilitée ça a l'air si simple et facile ;-) Merci

Those are nova tool rests. Great value for the price and the modular system is lovely. I have a 2",6" and 12" which all screw onto a post. Its fast to change and works well. My only complaint is that they are not hardend steel at the tip. Aha merci! C'est juste de la pratique!

[@miles11we]

Iv turned steel on mine, its slow but perfectly possible if you can turn the spindle speed down far enough(like 100rpm or slower). Hss and w2 tools and making as rigid of a setup as possible.

[@bocus9001]

So creative and amazing 😍😍

[@josephpotterf9459]

Thanks

[@JanSzymonGoowacz]

Not once I saw cross slide tool rest from small methal lathe adapt to wood lathe, or even cros vise convert to tool slide. Im sure even naw I can finde some such combination on Polish website like Ur kreglist. If U planing lot of turning can be beter solution then freehand cut.

[@lkj974]

you are fearless and intrepid. But I have to say, this video is a good argument for getting a metal lathe. I can see cutting the hammer head freely like this gives much more scope for artistic expression, but I was holding my breath while you were turning the brass. I can believe it took a year to work this out. There must have been some scary moments.

The chatter is what is hard to control, overall I don't find it more scary or more dangerous. Turning wood with a skew is much scarier in my opinion aha. The chips are nasty though!

[@lkj974]

I heartily agree about using a skew. “The Devil’s can opener”

[@Savva-copper]

Wow👍

[@emostorm7]

You can turn other soft metals

[@green_building]

You're really good young man.. Take care of those sharp spinning cutters 😎👍

[@MrPete1x]

Don't forget to fit the riving knife on the table saw

[@Eigengrey]

After reading all the comments, god i feel like such a pervert😭. But to the point thats epic workmanship

[@pauls5745]

very nice! ty for sharing. I'd make the shaping tools short as a very stiff tip is what you want for metals, eliminating vibration and chatter. surface finish will be improved with stubby cutters I think it's more to the point to say wood vs. metal-cutting lathe since I do have an old engine wood lathe ( it does not supply it's own power, it's mechanically belt driven) and a metal-cutting lathe that is not engine driven

I made the cutters longer because, when cutting with a tool rest, the unsupported part of the cutter is defined by the space between the tool rest and the work. As such, a longer handle or blade on the other side of the tool rest will simple help you hold it more firmly. Though in metal lathe you would be totally right about wanting to keep the cutter short. Your comment made me doubt if I had perhaps made a mistake calling a mental lathe and engine lathe but from what a quick googling could tell me, an engine lathe is simply a metal lathe. The name engine was apparently given to the metal lathe do to its contribution in making steam engines!

[@nazimsaifiartwork]

Mst bro

[@clbro3085]

👍👍👍👍

[@CM-sd4gi]

I rather think an engine lathe is by far and away safer. This endeavor can go wrong very fast.

Thats an important concern but I think this is deceptively safe. As a matter of fact, I'd argue safer than turing wood as turning brass doesn't have the potential to explode in your face. The chip load is obviously small and and it also can't grip the way wood can. You turn with a negative rake angle and the material is dense which regulates the load. Many modern wood turners relying on gouges for wood turning which are hard to have much go wrong with but when turning with a skew chisel I feel much more at risk than with turning brass. Skew chisels grab easily and violently and they can make the wood explode on you if it grabs hard enough. Non of these issues are prominent when turning brass. The 2 real dangers I have found for turning brass are the shrap chips that I addressed in the video and working close to the chuck (the chuck guard fixed that) If you have a safety concern that is more specific I'd love to hear it!

[@CM-sd4gi]

@ I cannot agree hence why a tool is made specific for it use. Sorry argue what you want but seems absurd perhaps because it is.

[@rinkutartar945]

honey you need to show yourself. I have seen you before you're very beautiful!!!

[@dumpsterfire6351]

BS Aluminum will turn just fine

[@mikegarwood8680]

This sort of begs the question--why don't you just invest in a small metal (engine) lathe? You could use proper metal cutting tools, 3 or 6 jaw chucks self-centering chucks, as well as 4 jaw chucks to bore odd shaped parts. Also, you'd be able to reduce or eliminate chatter through using a rigid tool post and improve accuracy/repeatability down to better than .005", among other things.

Good quetion! For me, it comes down to money capabilities. I dislike small cheap imported lathes. They are inaccurate, give a bad finish, the dials are too small and most of all: they are a bad investment for me. A cheap import lathe starts at 1000 and an "okay" one is more around 2000$ (cad) which is still not an insignificant amount of money. At that price, I would rather pay more to get used American made lathe or a used larger import lathe. But that means investing 3000$-5000$ or so which I don't have for a lathe at the moment. Furthermore, engine lathes are not the best at making curved parts. They can with form tools, but a small 1000$ will chatter like no tomorrow with a 1" wide form tool. Since I'm not making parts for engineering (for the most part) but rather for decorative work, curves are important which gives the wood lathe an advantage over the metal lathe. Since making this video I have even talked to some guys who have a full machine shop and still hope on the wood lathe for some curved parts made of brass. An other option is mounting a woodlathe tool rest on a metal lathe, but that removes most advantage of using a metal lathe anyways. In the video I am showing one more option for working brass, for some it may be worth it and for others it may seem silly. Totally depends what kind of work you do and how you work

[@mikegarwood8680]

@ I realize that this can be expensive and the Chinese ones are small and (seemingly) "cheap", however, with some small additional investment (that you may have already made), some time taken to set up and "dial in" the machine and (especially) some research, you can make one of these a very accurate machine to rival their larger cousins. Much of the knowledge is learning how to use an engine lathe itself. The only real thing hampering these is the work diameter over the cross slide and travel distance in the X-axis. For an example, an 8" x 16" lathe, "means" it has a "maximum" swing (diameter) of 8+" and a max travel distance of (about) 16". These are only available if one removes the carriage and mounts the work between centers (not really useful). The "real" swing over the carriage is

@@mikegarwood8680 I'm quite familiar with small 7x10 imports, larger imports, small American lathes and even industrial lathes. I've used all of them, I've done maintenance on several of them and I've rebuilt imports before. The technique showed in thi video is one used by artists, seldom my machinists. As mentioned, its used by clock makers and jewelers. Yes form tools work or "radius tools" but I'm not turning a small 0.200" round over, I'm making parts that would take a form tool that is 1" wide which a smal import won't handle. Plus, making forms also takes time if you are doing a one off peice, they also often chatter and its hard to get them to be as smooth and organic in shape as hand turning without putting in a lot of work into them. This video may not be right for you, but for me, a cheap import, even "tuned" is not what I'm looking for. The swing/capacity of the lathe is not my issue, its the accuracy and the rigidity of the lathe that bothers me on small imports. And even once I do have a good metal lathe, I will still use this method on the wood lathe for one off curved parts.

[@mikegarwood8680]

@ The radii you are cutting for your ball peen hammers is well within the reach of existing tooling for any engine lathe (and can work with wood as well). Also, if one wants to go "freehand", there are tools to do that as well (within reason). Also, it might help to change out the jaws of your chuck with self-made ones out of aluminum (soft jaws). The chuck bore may be large enough to allow the material to fit within the chuck, up to the chuck mounting plate and beyond if this also has a bore and so on. Having a smaller portion of the work exposed from the chuck face will reduce chatter. The "rule of thumb" is 2 to 3 diameters of unsupported distance (before using the tailstock and a center). This all boils down to the philosophical/practical question between using a wood versus engine lathe. I've used wood lathes, but dislike it's inability to cut none but the softest metals and to do so with any accuracy and repeatability. I also have cut wood on an engine lathe and find it as easy as cutting metal and I don't have to worry about breaking tool rests (as opposed to breaking cutting tools), among other things. So, all things being considered, I find the engine lathe superior for it's abilities and the freedoms it gives me. On the other hand, accuracy and repeatability may not be all that important to you when compared to the artistry you're trying to achieve.

[@ChrisGrosh]

I have recently been making copper beads out of 10mm copper rod stock using a hand drill and a dremel and hand files. Definitely wouldn't recommend it but it's definitely possible and not very hard. Anyways I put the vacuum cleaner hose in a vice and point it at my work. Pretty ghetto setup but it works pretty good for sucking up all the metal shavings . Like I said it works but definitely would recommend something better and safer.