Shopsmith Forums

I needed a longer bed and came up with this. Worked fine.

I don't know if your design would be stout enough if the work is not very well balanced. I would install some diagonal braces from the ectension arm to the bar stock at the hinge end to avoid any twisting caused by heavier work pieces. It looks to be adequate for the size of the piece you have mounted in the pic.
Bill V

wa2crk wrote:I don't know if your design would be stout enough if the work is not very well balanced. I would install some diagonal braces from the ectension arm to the bar stock at the hinge end to avoid any twisting caused by heavier work pieces. It looks to be adequate for the size of the piece you have mounted in the pic.
Bill V

I agree. I would like to see a much heavier piece of angle iron on the cross piece welded to the posts in the SS end hinge. It looks like a bent sheet steel angle. Otherwise very ingenious.

Thanks for looking Guys.
You are right it probably would not hold up to a lot of heavy turning but..
This was a quick one time thing . Only had 4 post to turn and it worked great for what
I wanted.

rdgrnstd wrote:I needed a longer bed and came up with this. Worked fine.

I notice that the extension doesn’t have provisions for a tool rest. Did you reverse the workpiece end-for-end to turn the outboard end? Or was it left square?

I like it. Similar to how standalone lathes have extension beds that can be added for increased length or girth. I don't think I have seen anyone attempt this on a Shopsmith before. For longer turnings they either replace the waytubes with longer tubes or even put 2 Shopsmiths back to back. To me, your idea is following what a standalone lathe has with an extension bed.

It was mostly square but i needed to reverse the piece to turn about a foot each end.

I have no metalworking experience, but just wanted to check on the welds that you show in the picture (so please take these comments with a grain of salt). It looks like you tacked the corners of each joint, correct? Are you going to finish welding the entire seam of all the joints? I ask because the forces involved in woodturning can be rather high, especially with a large post as you showed. I just don't want it to come apart on you during a turning. Do you think the joints are strong enough with just tacking?

RFGuy wrote:I have no metalworking experience, but just wanted to check on the welds that you show in the picture (so please take these comments with a grain of salt). It looks like you tacked the corners of each joint, correct? Are you going to finish welding the entire seam of all the joints? I ask because the forces involved in woodturning can be rather high, especially with a large post as you showed. I just don't want it to come apart on you during a turning. Do you think the joints are strong enough with just tacking?

Did you read the OPs following posts? He said this was a one time project.

dusty wrote:

RFGuy wrote:I have no metalworking experience, but just wanted to check on the welds that you show in the picture (so please take these comments with a grain of salt). It looks like you tacked the corners of each joint, correct? Are you going to finish welding the entire seam of all the joints? I ask because the forces involved in woodturning can be rather high, especially with a large post as you showed. I just don't want it to come apart on you during a turning. Do you think the joints are strong enough with just tacking?

Did you read the OPs following posts? He said this was a one time project.

Yeah, I saw that. I just wanted to ask the question to the OP, or anyone else on the forum who is an experienced metalworker. I like the idea that he showed of this extension, but just wondering if someone wanted it for full time use, how they might make it more robust, i.e. what Bill and John pointed out for it it already.

Longer waytubes might be the better solution, but if someone only needs to occasionally turn a longer item like this...and they are okay with flipping the turning since the tool rest won't reach to the end, then this might be a good fast and simple solution to add a bed extension. Of course, you would need to be able to weld to fabricate it, but if you already own a welder this should be a cheap solution.