First Thing

As I imagine most people do after buying a lathe nowadays, I also spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos.

One of my favourites is mrpete222 AKA Tubalcain, he's a retired teacher in the states who's done hundreds, if not 1000s, of videos on Milling, Turning and even casting aluminium parts, a definite must watch.

One of the little jobs he did made me think about doing the same thing for my little lathe, a knurled thumb screw to lock/release the measuring dial on the cross slide.
This replaces the supplied grub-screw and lets you set '0' on the dials as a deference point and then lock it in.

Grub-screw replaced by thumb-screw

Instead of turning the M6 thread from scratch though I cheated by using an M6 Bolt, all I did was shorten it and turn down the head so it was round and then I would have knurled the head ...if I had a knurling tool .. as I don't I just took my Dremel clone and put some cuts around the circumference of the head.

I also turned a small brass disc to put under the screw to protect the shaft from wear.

Assembly of parts

All in all it works pretty well but my next project meant that I don't often use the dials on the cross slide ... that's in the next post.