The lathe needs a bench. I can’t keep it on the main bench in the shed, it’ll need it’s own stand. At some point, I may want to think about making it mobile, but for now I just want something stable so I can actually use the lathe before I go back to work next week. I’m desperate to have a shot at turning a bowl on it!

I’ve built / made a few things now, some of them I just made up as I went along (bird table), but some things I want a better idea of what I’m doing before I start. That includes the garden steps I built and an elevated planter for my mother-in-law. It also includes this lathe bench.

I have used Sketchup Free for the various projects I wanted to plan and it works out great! It’s not easy, but it isn’t terrible and it really helps. What it doesn’t do is help visualise how big something will be (the planter turned out massive), but that’s also my achiles heal anyway (cooking too much food, building things too big, buying too much decorating stuff, etc.)

Here’s the plan for the lathe stand.

Imagine that diagonal brace in the middle being mirrored on the other side (I couldn’t be bothered to draw it). The different colours are for different sizes of lumber, 14cm, 9cm or 6cm wide (all 3.8cm thick). Hopefully that’ll be strong enough to hold the 85kg weight of the Record Power CL2, and keep it stable. We’ll see (it’s going to be sitting on a shed floor with a lot of bounce, which isn’t going to help!)

Wish me luck.