What’s a Hand Lathe?

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A hand lathe is a woodworking appliance that spins a stock to allow a craftsman to chisel and create products with perfect radial symmetry. Examples of such products include baseball bats and candle holders. The term is generalized to any machine that does not use a computer to control the movement of the bit or other tools with numerical coordinates. Most modern lathes for the individual hobbyist turn stock into wood with variable speed electric motors. While there are lathes for working metals and other materials, most hobbyists work with less demanding materials like wood and bone.

A piece of wood is fixed to both ends of the apparatus; this defines the axis of rotation. The tailstock end rotates freely, while the head end is a spindle whose rotation can be controlled. A tool stand, usually on rails running parallel to the spinwood, allows the craftsman to hold a sharp chisel or gouge with a steady hand as he removes material along its length to the desired shape. Grinding, drilling, and other rotation-assisted tasks are also performed with the lathe.

Before electric motors, steam engines and water wheels, lathes were operated manually. In a centralized industrial scale, the hand lathe was normally operated by two people. The master cut while an apprentice turned the spindle by hand. There is evidence that such devices were in use in ancient Egypt.

At the distributed scale of the craft, the hand lathe has been adapted to be operated by a single individual with various mechanisms allowing the spindle to turn. An early method was to twist the string of a bow around the end of the spindle in such a way that a reciprocating back and forth motion of the bow correspondingly rotated the spindle in an alternating fashion. An improvement to this was the spring-loaded post lathe. The rope wound around the spindle was connected at the top to a tightly bent post and at the bottom to a pedal. By operating the pedal, thus turning the spindle, both hands were free to work the wood.

There are hobbyists, especially those interested in antique reproductions and historical reenactment, who build real hand lathes. Most hobbyists will purchase the type powered by an electric motor. They are available as portable workbench models and freestanding models.

Among the hand lathes available, there are several specialized types, as well as some notable common techniques. Most appliances are adaptable to faceplate turning in which the wood is attached only to the rotating headstock, and rather than cutting perpendicular to its rotation, shapes such as cups and bowls are cut axially to the rotation. Nonuniformly radially symmetrical shapes can also be created by eccentric turning, reassembling and machining a single piece with multiple axial rotations. A double-spindle hand lathe can trace and reproduce a master shape not unlike the way copies of door keys are made.

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