Making a treadle for a 1770s lathe

I while back I asked if anyone had any old English Brown Oak that I could make a reproduction treadle for my 1770s English gentleman's lathe. Richard Newman had the perfect wood for this and gave it to me. Thank You Richard! I also posted about making the jam nuts for this. Today I went out to my shop and thought, I'm going to play with this today, the wood parts. Truth be told, I'm not really a good woodworker when it comes to doing full scale work. Also my woodworking bench is in the fair weather shop out back and it totally covered in other stuff. So I just machined the parts. This is the back shaft of the treadle, it mounts between those pointed bolts and I still have the original rolled iron ferrules. The Brown Oak is 1 1/2" square, that is huge for me. I first turned the ends, then milled the corners off forming an octagon. A little more milling down the side and after some work with knife and file they have a delightful "lambs tongue" in the corners. I just love the color of the wood, it seems to age just by handling it. I'll have to decide how much wear I'm going to add to the treadle when done.

rivett608 said:

I while back I asked if anyone had any old English Brown Oak that I could make a reproduction treadle for my 1770s English gentleman's lathe. Richard Newman had the perfect wood for this and gave it to me. Thank You Richard! I also posted about making the jam nuts for this. Today I went out to my shop and thought, I'm going to play with this today, the wood parts. Truth be told, I'm not really a good woodworker when it comes to doing full scale work. Also my woodworking bench is in the fair weather shop out back and it totally covered in other stuff. So I just machined the parts. This is the back shaft of the treadle, it mounts between those pointed bolts and I still have the original rolled iron ferrules. The Brown Oak is 1 1/2" square, that is huge for me. I first turned the ends, then milled the corners off forming an octagon. A little more milling down the side and after some work with knife and file they have a delightful "lambs tongue" in the corners. I just love the color of the wood, it seems to age just by handling it. I'll have to decide how much wear I'm going to add to the treadle when done.

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I'm relieved to see a master working wood with his machine tools. I kinda thought it was forbidden. Can't wait to see the rest of the project!!

If it was forbidden I don't think I would have ever gotten anything made.

After enjoying your posts for so many years Rivett maybe I can add a bit of information in return. While it wouldn't have worked for that project, a very helpful tool to have handy with a mill and wood as the material that needs machining. I use this type. StewMac Safe-T-Planer | stewmac.com I've no idea how well this one works since I bought two of the original Wagner Safe T Planners back when they were still in business. That Stewmac is an obvious copy of there's. Wagner originally designed them for drill press use before the cheaper off shore bench top planers became so common. There in my opinion a serious accident waiting to happen on a drill press without a drawbar, but work fantastic locked into a collet with the part properly held in a milling vise on a mill. Having a dro and power feed on the X axis feels like I'm almost cheating.:-) There one drawback is chip out on the rotary planers exit side. Backing up the work on that side with even cheap pine or fir construction grade wood prevents that. It's dead easy to dimension any wood to .005" or less. Think of them as a 3 tooth 3 inch face mill for wood. And most mills rpm ranges allows them to operate at the speeds they were designed to. One project I've used mine for was a 1/6th scale Napoleon Civil War era 12 lbr cannon. On the main trail piece there's an inside V shape at the rear with a 13 degree angle. The metal plate that forms part of the towing ring and that the forward pointing ring attaches to has to match that inside V shape as closely as possible. I used a sine bar and gauge blocks to get the correct angle to machine both the wood and metal so they match exactly. I've tried common router bits in my mill, but even at 4k rpm it's too slow for them to cut cleanly. End mills do give a bit better results, but still not even close to what these rotary planers can do. The tool marks these planers leave might be .003" deep at most so a card scraper or fairly fine sand paper takes those off in a few strokes. If the project size isn't too large I always use my BP clone to fill in for all the other wood working machines I don't have room for. Mine have a slightly larger diameter upper step machined on them that prevents taking larger cut depths than the thickness of each tooth, so there limited to about a 3/8ths doc. That upper step does prevent getting in tight to any raised areas the part might have, but could easily be machined off. And yes they can make a hell of a mess with the chips and dust. A strategically positioned shop vac hose is a big help with that while there being used.