The Biggest Gingery Lathe Casting: The Bed | Part 1 

his personality shows through in his writing! It's too bad I never got a chance to meet him. At least we still have his books.

I haven't finished so many things because they weren't perfect 🤣🤣

Sounds great! Most of my equipment wasn't bought but built. To be honest the stuff you can buy would work perfectly for zamak, and it's mostly cheaper than I paid just for materials

Sculpting clay? Like sculpey? I think I tried that years ago, not sure why I didn't try that here. I don't live too far from Racine actually!

There is a similar process for making concrete counter forms. Place a thick bead of silicone on all edges and then use a fondant tool (metal ball bearing on a stick) to run a fillet along all the ends. The circular ball makes a perfect radius fillet, a perfectly straight line where the ball hits both walls, and the leftover silicone oozes out past the line. Once the silicone cures/dries, you can peel off the ooze out, leaving a perfectly rounded fillet.

if it works then it's a good idea!

Maybe I should I should go with jinjery anyway because I'm a ginger 🤣

Dude, every time you do, you should take a bite of a gingersnap cookie to emphasize the point.

well i'm not great at welding so you go me beat there!

Thanks! From misconception to more refined misconception is a perfect way to put it. Even masters keep learning, because you can't master it all. You can get less bad at stuff though and that plus time means you can do anything. Eventually 🤣

Hell yeah man. Thanks for taking the time to respond

Thanks!

Go for it!

Step second half, hours of scraping 🤣😭

@@PaulsGarage I forgot to say it’s your fault I’ve been saying Gingery wrong in my head for all these years now, lol 😂

@@johnmccanntruth I say it ginger-ey. He's dead now so I don't think he cares.

"industry" isn't hand-casting your own lathes. "industry" has "economies of scale" behind it, where their casting equipment is used 100,000x as much as a home-caster's, and anything that can save a dollar here and there is worth saving. In terms of cost, at scale, cast iron is like a penny a pound, zamak is several hundred times as expensive. If you ever want to do cast iron, you need equipment that can do it, thus foundries will all have equipment that can do it and it's no harder for them than to use zinc, so might as well. You will end up with a much better lathe casting zamak than you will casting iron, because anything you make out of cast iron is going to suck. It's an industrial process, not well suited to a garage process. This is like arguing that you're going to create multi-ton sheet metal stamping dies to create replacement 1/4 panels for your Camero because that's how "industry" does it... yeah, when they make 100,000 of them. When you make a single (or 20) 1/4 panel at home, you get an English wheel and a welder and patch it together. I'm skeptical of your decision-making in general if you think that copying "industry" is an intelligent way to build anything.

@MattsAwesomeStuff I appreciate that you think zamak is the better option, I encourage you to make your lathe from it. I myself believe I can reasonably make mine from cast iron. I would like to point out luckygen has no problems with his cast iron results, and is sharing his wealth of information on RU-vid. Also, I resent your low estimate of my ability to cast metal, and would like to kindly invite you to eat a dick about it. Of the things I know about zamak, I am less impressed than by cast iron. Also since you know so much better than me, will zamak be durable enough for my specific lathe application? Or should I stick with cast iron?

haha i bet those biscuits were mighty tough to chew!

Thanks! Good luck on yours!

I think you're right. I cut them off and polished it up, and i don't see any cracking or porosity, but it looks like the bed has a little shrinkage if i set a flat bar across the top. Anywhere there is a brace with a feeder attached, the surface is almost 1/32" lower.

yeah his equipment is great. I don't think i could manage giant iron pourings, especially in my home garage. The heat is just too much, i wouldn't feel safe enough.

@@PaulsGarage safety is for sure a consideration. I myself have the luxury of 5 acres, I plan to throw up a roof over a sand pit. In my mind Lucky's pouring shank is a safety feature. Keep the hot away from the body.

@@RFMongoose that sounds perfect for iron casting. When I did iron it was outside on a driveway, but my neighbors were very chill about me doing crazy stuff 🤣. Now I'm in a new house. The neighbors are cool, but the driveway slopes enough my furnace won't sit still (it's on wheels)

Oh yeah, I made a casting... Tray? Big casters. Basically a sandbox on wheels where I would put the furnace and all.

First *pour* attempt, but I did have to ram it up a few times 🤣

Good ideas, I gotta go get some

Long time for a long casting!

I suppose Wikipedia is as reliable as RU-vid comment sections anyway 🤣

@@PaulsGarage the main criticism i have of Wikipedia is information (mainly on obscure pages i find at 3 am) being out of date, or the lack of information, moreso that stuff being wrong. Granted checking the discussion page, and the sources always helps too. Granted typical Wikipedia apologist here lol, but i find the being aware of all that and learned media literacy is a good thing, but here i go rambling along lol **On the related note, my vote is pronounce it “Ginger-erly” **

Lots of baby powder is cornstarch these days. The stuff I have here is talc, I think only Johnson still sells talc baby powder? Not sure. Real parting powder is probably the best way to be sure you got the right stuff.

I've done cast iron before, but its not fun LOL. I can feel my face burning just thinking about it. I'm using ZA12 here because that's more manageable for someone following along with the project.

@@PaulsGarage See I knew it, you at least tried it xD It´s way hotter than Zamac of course. Carry on!

@@sierraecho884 even bronze is no fun IMO, so much heat lol. But I'm modifying some stuff to make it go easier. I can't resist that bronze color, easily worth all the burns 🤣

@@PaulsGarage I know, it looks great doesn´t it ? Steel would be the holy grail for me but it´s super super hard. And the results are nowhere near as good as with ZAMAC, I mean this material is made to be cast. Aluminium is awesome too but just too damn light to create great details you need lots and lots of headpressure to overcome this with all it´s own issues.

I tried, it doesn't stick 😔 the wood filler I complained about sticks pretty well to 3D prints though

Thank you for info because I was gonna try it,good thing you replied because I would been like you 😔

Yes a plate or something to help hold the weight is the way to go

Thanks for the info! I've heard people hate cornstarch as baby powder but ill have to try it for parting powder once I run out of this stuff

Good idea!

Cast iron would be ideal, but I've melted cast iron before and decided to never do that again lol. The radiant heat was painful. Imagine a weld pool, but instead of the size of a drop, it's a quart. Even with welding equipment on I felt like I was on fire!

I just checked and I can't believe I didn't catch that! Amateur hour for me here

It's hard to see the shrinkage but it's there. It's pretty minor but if I get the camera close enough, the shiny surface makes the camera freak out and it can't focus.

The design in the book uses a steel plate as the ways. The bed is scraped flat, then the steel ways are attached to that as a base

Sorry to say, it won't. Each time you move the casting, you're resetting your Z-height. Picking up and moving the casting will mean a Z-error of a few thousandths of an inch plus inducing twist in the casting each time you clamp it to the table. You'll still end up scraping in the bed and slides anyway, and it honestly takes very little time to get it scraped in, once you learn how to scrape.

@@switch2472 yes because indicators don't exist. Wait, they do!

@@1pcfred Best of luck buddy, I've been a machinist for 18 years and have built two of these lathes and the shaper. Your indicator ain't gonna save you.

@@switch2472 I'd rather be lucky than good. You can only be so good but luck knows no bounds.

@@1pcfred Don't come cryin' to the people who tried to tell you when your lathe chatters and cuts a taper you can't correct. Trying to cut the bed in more than a single pass assumes you can generate a parallel surface, but because you can only cut approximately 1/3rd of the surface and your only reference surface gets removed from the game every time you move the casting, even with the nicest indicator you've got (I'm assuming a cheap 5 tenths indicator) you're never going to be true or flat to the required tolerances. The method outlined in the book just plain works and won't take four hours to get done if you follow the plan.

As a rule of thumb you should always heat your molds and use them asap as they will collect moisture when they cool again

@@taylorfackrell1547 it might have been for steel/iron, but I remember seeing molds EXPLODE due to moisture.

most "heating" you see is either to dry the sand to give a dry skin, or to burn off a mold coating that has an alcohol base.

Oh definitely 🤣

I don' t know, it might work. I know some people use wax. Not sure how well sand would release from a softer material like hot glue, but if wax works then IDK

Okay, just was curious

There is a steel plate that bolts on but the top has to be flat or the plate will be warped enough to throw the lathe off

Haha epic music montage of different views of scraping? 🤣🤣

I don't think i'll start doing it again, but you never know. I stopped doing it because people clicked away and the view percentage would tank. Plus it was another thing I had to write that would slow down video production, and i'm really tight for time usually

Yes! I 3D print lots of patterns. This one is too big for my printer though. I'd have to print it in pieces and stick it together. Totally doable but I already had the wood one. Most of the rest of the patterns will be 3D printed

Be me to it a bit (typing this as i watch) but i guess i meant to counteract the but if wood denting, could *maybe* make it a monolithic part too (rather than a bunch of parts and a wood mold) *GRANTED i am about as experienced in metal casting as i am in cad…not that much, so take my ideas as just that lol*

Thermal stability is also a concern Aluminium bronze would be an excellent choice

The best for everything lathe-related is likely cast iron. I can melt iron in this furnace but it's awfully scarry 🤣🤣

aluminum bronze is difficult to machine and would be difficult to scrape in. I think there are some other reasons (mainly cost) why aluminum bronze would not be a good choice. But who cares, it would look sweet.

"Liquidus" and "Solidus" don't mean slushy at all...they define the temperature at which the material is fully liquid, or fully solid. If you're below the liquidus temp, you're NOT fully liquid, and if you're above the solidus temperature, you're not fully solid. Hard to get more accessible than "this is the actual temperature that you're fully solid or fully liquid, anything between these is slush".

I didn't notice but I'm not attaching the plate in the way gingery does it. I'm going to more copy what makercise did

@@PaulsGarage yep, i'll see you're design in the next episodes !

Like posting an .stl somewhere? I wasn't planning on posting it because I didn't print this, but I suppose I could. I just made the alterations I mentioned in the video. Increase the height 1/2" and use thicker wood. Everything else as gingery said. Oh and no open slots across the top.

​@@PaulsGarage No need for the STL just the written specs so we can follow along. I'd hate to just "wing it" and find out down the track that some change in dimension (like "thicker wood" or increased height turned into an issue with fitment of some later part. If none of that is critical, then I'm all good as it is! Also, I'm thinking of making a pattern board for the main pattern (will make it easy to create a one-sided pattern and easy to pull it out). Then use a 3d printed block mold to ram up each of the cut outs and place them like cores. If this is not too crazy, is the width of the "reinforcing ribs" etc critical to any later fitment or is this design more to just reduce the material needed to cast the bed?

about 17 pounds is the weight of the bed, that is what was said on the livestream on 5/20/2023.

yup vs. about 4ish for the aluminum bed i have. after cutting the gates and feeders off, the bed ended up around 12. And no i haven't estimated exactly how much I need, but i have plenty of za12 for the parts im using for that, and i'm going to use bronze for some of it, too.

Hard G's yes

Good idea! There are a few machine shops around here and at least one guy I know of with a hobby machine shop. I want to try it by hand first but I'm sure I'll relent at some point 🤣🤣

@@PaulsGarage how are you going to blue the bed up? You don't have a big surface plate, do you?

mirror will flex too much, get a slab of granite kitchen countertop and stick some sheets of 60-80-120-200-400 grit down, grind away... it will be flat enough for scraping in a couple hours. maybe worth some annealing (tempering) for stress relief, I dunno how much zamak benefits from it. But from the description of the aluminum solidifying out first and floating to the top, followed by the zinc, it might have some? Anyways it would suck to put in the work and then have it slowly warp over time from residual stress

@@SamStinson that depends if you lay thr mirror on a solid surface you should be ok , i done it multiple times with smaller single cilinder heads

You and me both 🤣

Gingery was definitely a clever guy to come up with all of this pre-internet. A fulcrum would be best I think. Better than holding 20 lbs on the end of some tongs lol

Cast iron is much more difficult.

@@tinayoga8844 No shit, but its essentially the only worthwhile metal to cast for projects like this... That and aluminium bronze maybe, as its very rigid and probably could be said to be a better bearing and sliding surface than even machined, oily cast iron... Its like saying that making a wooden house is easier than a proper concrete and brick house, but if you remember the story of 3 or however many piglets there were, if it aint made skookum, you are wasting time and effort for naught... Not just that, but you likely risk your life by relying on inferior construction...

​@@camillosteuss Cast iron is more difficult and not worth it unless you have a lot more experience with it. The project originally calls for aluminum and the ZA-12 alloy being used is better in some ways. I don't know if you are familiar with the lathe design but it does not use the casting as the sliding surface. A steel plate is bolted to this casting and that is the bearing surface. I looked into making this lathe 25+ years ago. In the end I didn't like the design and decided to bite the bullet and buy a more substantial lathe. I consider the Gingery lathe an interesting project but not worth the effort as a working tool. You wrote "its(cast iron) essentially the only worthwhile metal to cast for projects like this". I don't think you have done much research into the ZA12 and ZA27 alloys. It compares favorably to cast iron. Do a search for the following PDF, FORTY CAST IRON PARTS SWITCHED TO ZA ALLOYS FOR MACHINING BENEFITS . www.albco.com/the-za-12-advantage/ alliedmetalcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ZAALLOY.pdf

Of course!

Haha that's debatable

I'm really happy with the water putty for fillets. Chirpy prefers wax even more but I haven't tried that yet