Shopsmith Forums

Fourteen of our Club members teamed up to build a pedal powered lathe. I made the center hub and spokes for the wheel.

That is very cool!

Have you turned anything on it yet? Where are the plans from?

That is cool.

Different parts built by different people: Is part of the fun seeing how close the pieces fit together before you have to start fiddling?

BuckeyeDennis wrote:That is very cool!

Have you turned anything on it yet? Where are the plans from?

We started with an article from "Fine Woodworking" circa 1979. Saw a youtube vid of a guy demoing it at a Mid Maryland Woodturners Club meeting. He pointed out several flaws/problems. Our leader of the project is a 91 year old retired engineer, thus several changes. I have not turned anything other than a few shavings. We are making a new to pulley for the top to increase the speed. At this time a steady pedal rate is giving about 550 RPM's. I'm hoping to practice on it to turn some "Freedom" pens" at the Paul Bunyan Festival in October. We are going to start selling tickets in July and raffle it off at the Paul Bunyan Festival on Saturday October 6, 2018. Tickets will be $2.00 each or 3 for $5.00. If there is any intertest here let me know. The festival is held at the Gurnsey county fairgrounds in Cambridge, Ohio A couple of pictures of Hoby Horn, our project leader.

AWSOME JOB Yo should all be very proud !

Fellow Buckeyes! I had a girlfriend from Cambridge when I was in school at Ohio State. And my wife (a different OSU girlfriend) once attended the Paul Bunyon Festival as a girl-scout leader. I recall that she was quite impressed by the bandsaw mills.

I’d be pleased to buy some raffle tickets, just let me know how.

Your machine reminded me of an antique human-powered lathe that I saw in St, Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands early this spring. I was touring a historic sugar plantation/mill, and there was an ancient woodworking shop in the basement of the manor house. The lathe was a two-man affair, as you can see in the pics below. It has a three-step wooden headstock pulley, and it appears that the axle of the big human-powered crank pulley was moved to different notches in it’s support frame for using the different pulley steps.
The woodshop also housed an antique treadle-powered wooden scroll saw. I didn’t take any pics of it, but it reputedly was used to make much of the architectural fretwork still gracing historic buildings in the nearby city of Frederiksted.