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A couple years ago I bought a 16oz bottle of Vactra 2 for my mini lathe and mini mill. I've been using it since, but it wasn't as tacky and tenacious as I expected it to be. It's particularly annoying on the vertical dovetails of my mini mill. I've gotten into the habit of re-lubing the ways...

So I now have a collection of 4 flute end mills on which a corner or two have been chipped. I figured I should be able to cut or grind the end mill shorter to get to the fresh cutting edge and keep on using them (obviously they wouldn't be center cutting). Is there any easy way to do this...

Once I got into my lathe rebuild I did start looking at something like that, except I need a lathe to make the pulleys... Hopefully I can make this happen after I get my lathe back together.

If you go with all metal, how often do you need to grease them?

UPDATE: I spoke with the manufacturer, and they confirmed the chuck was out of spec and told me to send it back. I purchased another chuck (4 jaw this time) and it measured 71.97mm, and it fits on the spindle beautifully.

I usually like to educate myself a little bit before calling the manufacturer. This is also the first time trying to fit a new chuck. For all I know the chucks are always undersized to allow the machinist to do the final fitting.

I'm fitting a new spindle to my mini lathe so I can upgrade to a 4" chuck without an adapter plate. However, the register on the spindle is 72.02mm while the register on the new chuck is only 71.9mm. I can see the spindle register being a little oversized to allow it to be turned down once...

If I change both spindle and countershaft to metal gears, what would break?

I agree with bazmak that a lock which clamps the saddle to the ways is preferable to one which lifts it up from the ways.

If someone has changed both the 7x12 headstock gears hi-lo gears to the metal ones, would you mind telling me how much louder they are than the stock plastic gears? I'm replacing the spindle hi-lo gear with a metal one, and I'm trying to decide if I should replace the countershaft one with...

How did you machine something only 0.1mm thick? It looks like I'm going to be doing something like this now, but I have no idea how to actually do it. :confused:

You may want to check my blog for other mini lathe mods to consider. I think especially useful ones for you would be the gib modification, the compound delete, the way protector, and the way wiper. http://benchtopmachineshop.blogspot.com

I'm installing a new 4" spindle in my mini lathe. Once it's installed, should I take a very light facing cut on the surface of the spindle to make sure it's square and flat?

I have a mini lathe and a mini mill I want to make covers for to keep the dust off when not is use. I haven't been able to find any pre-made covers, so I'm going to have to make my own. What is the best material to make them out of? I was thinking of using canvas.

Check out this page to better understand resolution, accuracy, and repeatability: http://www.yuriystoys.com/2013/12/selecting-scales-for-a-hobby-dro.html Do yourself a favor and check out TouchDRO. It's a DRO solution which uses a tablet as the readout and interface and is fairly scale...

I use iGaging scales together with TouchDRO. It's a very economical solution, and TouchDRO is fantastic to use; highly, highly recommended. I also run TouchDRO on my lathe. Instead of copying and pasting it all into here, I've written up how I mounted my scales and about setting up TouchDRO...

This needs to be repeated. Milling on a drill press can loosen the chuck on the taper.

No, I don't think so.

You seem to have started overthinking this. Especially since you live in an apartment and it's your first lathe, just buy this: http://www.littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=5100&category=1271799306 Or this...

One of the reasons I went with ER is because of the self extracting nature of the collets. Instead of trying to find a way to make this one work, I'm just going to get one with the ER standard offset flange.