Have been messing about with my lathe, to try and remember from my school days the rudiments of turning! I bought some aluminium stock off Ebay, which was the cheapest I could find, there is nothing local.
I bought some carbide lathe tools along with the lathe and these are really good, they really cut well, and don't seem to blunt off quickly. I made some candle holders for Libby, just to get the hang of things. Turning is really easy, the lathe does pretty high speeds 1200 rpm, I used around 1000 rpm for turning the aluminium.
Turning was easy, however I wanted to put 19mm holes in the candle holders, which was a bit of a strain, especially as getting the tail stock centered was a pain, I still haven't really sussed out which screws do what, and the Chinese manual is useless. Fortunately there is a wealth of info on the web.
I turned up 10 candle holders, none of which were exactly the same dimensions - I will have to practise my repeatability!
This weekend, I started making a ride height adjuster for the RG, it turned out OK, although tapping the aluminium bar in the lathe was physical, and as you can see from the pictures the central part slipped a bit in the chuck!
Anyway, apart from that I rebuilt the back end of my Triumph, apparently some models have been seizing the rear wheel bearings due to lack of greasing at the factory, so I rebuilt the hub, and I will attack the suspension linkages which apparently may have the same issue. In order to get the hub side nut off I soaked it in "degrippant" over night, and then used a long bar on the end of my rachet, to tighten it the torque setting is 146Nm - I don't think I have ever tightened something up that much on a bike!
