Making a steady rest for the Proxxon DB250 wood lathe

[tkay11]

After studying Johann's @archjofo posting on how to make a steady rest for the Proxxon wood lathe, I thought I would make one using just the materials I had to hand, His rest was made with a metal upright and metal holdings for the ball bearings. I didn’t have any metal plate, and, in any case, I thought it would be quite difficult to machine the parts in metal.

So I settled on a mix of card, basswood  and plywood, and all I had to buy were the ball-bearings. These were SKU bearings size: 623-ZZ - 3x10x4mm, for a total of £6.

I first took Johann’s plans but found the measurements didn’t quite match my Proxxon, especially as I wanted to have a range from about 2-10mm Ø for the various rods I would be using. So I took the measurements from the lathe directly – the most important being the height of the centre point and the width of the slot,
 

I started by making a cardboard mock-up to check the measurements.

Having thought about Johann’s method of using a screw fixing to hold the steady rest to the bed, I thought I might instead change the idea so that I could just use battens glued to the underside of the rest’s base.

The depth of the base should have been 2.8mm, but as I only had 3mm card, I used that. The upright was made from 5mm plywood, the lateral supports from 3mm card; the battens and bearing supports were made from 3mm basswood.

The individual parts for the upright and bearings are shown in the next photo.

The lathe bed section requires some careful measuring for the battens holding the base to the bed.

The battens were fixed as follows using PVA glue. Note the wing nuts for the stop screws, which were to be held on the inner part of the rest, so that a screwdriver could be used to turn the screw from the outer side.

When fitted to the bed, it looks as follows, and works very well.

If you want to use the plans, I have printed them to PDF and attach them. The JPGs are:

 

 

Naturally, this is not nearly as elegant as Johann's, and quite clunky, but it does the job I want it to. I'll see how well it lasts! If you want the PDFs, please contact me by Personal Message. Hoping this has been of interest,

 

Tony

Steady rest Proxxon 1.pdf Steady rest Proxxon 2.pdf

[hollowneck]

Very nice. I love my Proxxon DB250. I use it for nearly all my masting & spar work.

I'll see if I can build this from your plans with odds n' sods in my shop (I'll need to buy the ball bearings!). Many thanks for the detailed instruction files.

Like myself and others here, you must have an engineering background: good photos, quite clearly explained. Great CAD plans!

[jfhealey]

Thank you Tony. That is an interesting addition to a Proxxon DB250. I have one. The principal limitation, from my perspective, is the length of the bed. The hole through the motor section allows for turning longer sections than the bed length but the limitation there is the relatively small diameter of the hole - 11mm or so. I could not, for example, turn the main mast for my Cheerful on the DB250. I ended up sticking it in the chuck of a power drill but precision goes to a degree by the wayside.

 

Have you thought, I wonder, about extending your device so as to extend the bed length? I know that some Australian users of the DB250 can purchase an extra aluminium extrusion (Proxxon?) that presumably bolts on to the Proxxon bed (not authorised by Proxxon!) but the part does not appear to be available in the UK.

 

In the meantime I may have a go at your version of Johann's rest which as you say does not require Johann's ability to machine metal - something way beyond my skill level.

 

All the best

Fred  

[tkay11]

@jfhealey: Fred, I bought the extension some years ago directly from BriMarc Tools & Machinery, Unit 10 Weycroft Avenue, Axminster, Devon EX13 5PH. They're an offshoot of Axminster. It was about £35 and mighty useful.

 

@hollowneck: Thanks, Ron. I picked up CAD when I started ship modelling a few years ago. I am not an engineer, just a CAD user.

 

Tony

[jfhealey]

Thank you Tony. That is very useful to know. I had thought the part was only available in Oz. I shall see if I can get hold of it. Coupled with your steady it would I think transform the usefulness of the DB250.

Fred

[tkay11]

I would just add that there is some flexibility in the various dimensions, so there's no need to stick rigidly to the plans. The most important thing to check is the centre mark for the upright, which can be done by putting a pin in the centre of the smallest collet in the headstock, and pushing an initial template card onto it. I am sure each machine will have a slight variation, and there's the thickness of the card base of the upright to consider.

 

Tony

[wefalck]

Old-time machinists also just pinned a piece of card-board to such uprights with an appropriate hole punched into it - a disposable steady that does not mar the work. Only suitable for small and light work though.