Well, the folks just got rid of their sewing machine and being the pack rat I am, I figured I might turn it into a rod lathe.

Anyone have any experiece doing this? Wondering if there are any suggestions on mounting and how to attach the rod to the motor.

We'll see if it works!

Thanks in advance!

Useing that motor/set up is the way I wrap all my rods. I've done well over 100 and I can't see doing them any other way. You'll need that aluminum sleeve, it has two small allen keys and you'll also need the chuck. First you set the height of your rollers then center your motor to that height. In this pic of my old set-up I used wood it was solid , the setup I have now I bolted the motor on a peice of L shaped steel (bought @ homepot) I then screwed the L bracket to the wall. I also saved the wire setup from the old sewing machine. You can find any missing items at sewing machine repair shops. With little pratice thread FLY's off spools, you'll see.

I'm still using this one I made a few yeas ago, used a clothes line pulley and an o-ring for a drive belt.

I used a grill roticery motor. For the chuck I used some PVC pug fittings with 1/4-20 taps for screws to clamp down on the blank. Nice and slow. I also use it to dry plugs on.

Thanks for the replies. I'm gonna dismantle the machine and see if I can turn out some rods! We'll see...I'm all thumbs :err:

Here's one I built a couple of years ago. Sewing machine motor uses a rheostat instead of a foot pedal for speed control. I used a three-position switch so the drying motor and the sewing motor could not be run at the same time.