Brian Ross
Active Member
A steady rest has been on my list of things to build/acquire for years. It recently made it to the top of the list and here is what I came up with:
It was made to fit an Emco V10P lathe and adjusts from about 1/4" to 3.5"+. That's plenty of range for what I do. The main body is two layers of 1/2" cold rolled plate screwed and welded together and the fingers are 1" hot rolled that have been welded to the main body of the steady rest. The operation of the fingers is kind of interesting. The knurled section you can see is threaded 32 TPI right hand and the extending parts with the brass tips are threaded 20 TPI left hand. The result is that one revolution of the knurled knob advances the knurled knob 1/32" and the tip of the finger by over 1/8". So, it doesn't take a huge number of turns of the knurled knobs to make adjustments and the knobs only have to travel in and out about 1/4 the distance of the tips. Not sure I explained that very well but its like differential threads in reverse.
The welds were cleaned up and then I used bondo to smooth things out prior to painting.
It was made to fit an Emco V10P lathe and adjusts from about 1/4" to 3.5"+. That's plenty of range for what I do. The main body is two layers of 1/2" cold rolled plate screwed and welded together and the fingers are 1" hot rolled that have been welded to the main body of the steady rest. The operation of the fingers is kind of interesting. The knurled section you can see is threaded 32 TPI right hand and the extending parts with the brass tips are threaded 20 TPI left hand. The result is that one revolution of the knurled knob advances the knurled knob 1/32" and the tip of the finger by over 1/8". So, it doesn't take a huge number of turns of the knurled knobs to make adjustments and the knobs only have to travel in and out about 1/4 the distance of the tips. Not sure I explained that very well but its like differential threads in reverse.
The welds were cleaned up and then I used bondo to smooth things out prior to painting.