A favorite tool?

It would be difficult to choose a favorite tool. Although these days if you ask my wife she would say I am obsessed with lathes. Of course it is all nonsense, admittedly I do have one or two of these machines. While you can turn wood on a lathe designed for metal and metal on one for wood the machines are optimized for their intended materials. I have a single wood lathe and a Shopsmith. The Shopsmith makes a fine lathe but the subject of this blog is my Jet midi lathe.

The lathe is a solid well made machine. It lacks the electronic speed control and indexing available on the current more expensive machines. However, it is a simple thing to shift the belt to change the speed and the current indexing is too primitive for my purposes. So I am happy to have the older, simpler version and accessorize as required. With a standard #2 Morse taper at each end and 1″ × 8 threaded spindle there is much to choose from.