A friend of mine has offered me the use of a small lathe.
While I am vaguely familiar with the theory of turning, and have often seen it done, I have never done any myself. Does anyone have any good links
that would be useful in teaching myself to turn parts in steel and aluminium?
I have searched "lathe"and "turning" and seen some downloads that Rorty posted.
Cheers
Fred WB
IMO much better to get someone to show you how to do it than try and learn it from a book. The book will give you the theory, and just because you
understand it doesnt mean you will be able to produce parts to any great quality....
Turning itself is not difficult. However being repeatable and precise is, and takes a lot of practice.
David
as Flak says, good idea to get somebody to show you the ropes so to speak!
I "learnt" turning at college and school and read about it but nothing could beat working with an experienced machinist for a few hours.
Simple little things like quick way to set tool centre height, simple ways of getting the rhs datum when parting off and all the little daft things
that take ages if you " do them the right way" but that machinists have little cheats for!
[Edited on 23/11/05 by NS Dev]
If you are thinking of building a locost from the groound up you would probably be better off trying to get access to a mill than a lathe. That is unless it is one of the model making ones that have the mill attachment.
Nah... get the lathe, THEN get the mill! 
Even a small lathe will teach you most of what you need to know - and will certainly reinforce the need for sharp tools!
UncleFista's site looks really good, but I haven't had time to study it in great depth yet (work keeps getting in the way 
)
David
yep, with Mr Jenkins on that one. You can do most of the milling in a decent ex-industrial lathe that you can do on a hobby mill attachment anyway by
sticking the end mills in the chuck and making a jig to mount a crossvice on the toolpost mount.
Must do that for my lathe!!!
Great for making fishmouths on round tube.
Quick Tip go to the local libary and see if they have the trade books used by apprentices in Aus there are three tafe books giving the fundamentals of
the machines, settings, terms, etc been the same for years or the standard book from south bend (American) how to run a lathe a great many people have
taught themselves with this book oh and the tip to set centre height of tools etc is to use a 6 inch ruler between the tip of the tool and the work
piece if it is straight up and down its on c/height
Yep I agree with most of the guys on this one get some one to show you how to grind tools and set speeds and feeds
With the text books they will give you the fundametals but you cant beat being shown