Index Your Lathe

You don't even know what that means, right? You shouldn't. You should see the sun and have friends and all the nice stuff. That's the stuff I gave up so I can learn the depths of lathe-related knowledge. I'm like the Raistlin Majere of woodworking.

Anyway, what does it mean to index a lathe? The index is just a way for you to measure the rotation of your lathe. It would generally be measure in degrees, but it can be marked in different ways. Some lathes come pre-indexed, which is very nice. Here's what I did with my mini-lathe:

I added a pointer to the front, made of some brass scrap I had laying around.

I also took a measuring tape and measured the exact circumference of the hand wheel (261mm) and then divided that into three and 4 to get my various measurements. I did a split into quarters (0, 90, 180 and 270) and also one into thirds (0, 120, 240) since I figure that will be all I feel like dealing with for a very long time.


What I did was to wrap some masking tape onto the wheel, then marked it with a pencil. I used a protractor and the tape again to make sure I wasn't crazy. Once I was satisfied, I took my Dremel (Actually a Craftsman rotary tool fitted with Dremel brand bits) with the engraving ball on it and engraved the marks into the metal. This way, even though I'll be handling the wheel a lot, I'm not going to lose my marks. I may go back and sharpen them up at some point, or add more, but I at least have a solid baseline for it.

Here's what I did with it as a first project:

First thing was to turn a simple wand design on the big lathe.

Then I used the tool rest, the index and a pencil to mark lines along the length of the parts to be spiraled. I used a ruler and my measuring tape to mark both the circumferential circles and the diagonals. Spirals take a lot more layout time and energy to do properly than simple turned pieces, but they're awesome.

I took a microplane rasp and some various small round files to the diagonal lines, to start my grooves.

You pretty much just keep going that way until you get the depth you want.

Unfortunately, that's where it all ends, at least for me. I'm not satisfied with my sanding options, so I haven't really done much else. I'm going to keep working on it, for sure, and see if maybe a sharp chisel is my solution. I don't know, but I'll keep working and get back to you. There's no way this little wooden bastard is going to beat me, though. I'll get it.